Hello. My games are getting deindexed. The CTR is gone, and the games aren't showing up in search. I think it's because I updated the builds. Why is this now a punishable offense? Players are finding bugs, and I'm fixing them. How should I proceed?
Games:
Your page got flagged for human review, it has been reviewed and is eligible for indexing again.
I’m not sure what’s going on in this thread here, there’s a lot of unusual activity so I’m going to archive it in a bit. If you’re another dev with an issue please either create a new thread or contact support. I’ll try to go through all the posters who have already posted in here though to check their pages.
I also want to add: we are very much aware of the indexing issues. This past week we did a pass on some of our risk heuristics to reduce false positive rates for flagging games for needing review before indexing. Our review requirements will need to remain unfortunately because we get a lot of scammers and malware. We’re a website that allows anyone to immediately create a page an upload files, that’s just the nature of the platform. We’re hoping to reduce the rate legitimate accounts are affected as much as possible.
Thanks
People posted here not to get their games indexed, but to flag an issue for you. I don't want to be rude, but what you're doing is completely unfair and just makes the only decent platform for hobbyist developers unusable. I don't know what you think you're achieving, but people are just desperate to get some attention, and you call it an "unusual activity" lol. Flagged for human review, we get it, you don't have staff to review things, but idk, add a notification at least? Implement some sort of KYC for the developers? I never dealt with that issue myself, I'm just here on behealf ot others, and what I've seen is kinda disgusting. Sorry, my dude. I know how it is, and you're gonna keep getting a steady flow of games, but for the love of people who are starting out, give them some kind of option 😒 IDK take 1$ payments to post the game without that issue or something if you have to.
We have over 1.7 million indexed pages with around 700 indexed per day, that’s an enormous scale. It would be really bad if a piece of malware made it into one of our popular browse pages or homepage. We have to be cautious by default. It’s not apparent from your end, but I really do fight with scammers and malware on a daily basis. It’s a really difficult thing to balance. (In fact, I literally just restored a user’s hacked account that was used to upload a malware page where the scammer literally made a topic in the forum here asking about their “indexing status”)
Implement some sort of KYC for the developers
Our system already takes into account reputation on our service, the large majority of accounts operate without issues and have established reputation that prevents them from getting flagged. I know it’s very upsetting for those who get stuck with no course of action. Our system doesn’t reveal too much information to prevent scammers from reverse engineering the process.
I didn’t write my original reply to be dismissive of the issue, I know it’s frustrating. I’m just being transparent about the situation. As I mentioned in the previous post, I understand it’s getting to be a bigger issue and I am actively working on changing our back-end heuristics to prevent false positives. In the meantime, the same recommendations I always give apply: operate your account as normal. Your page is still fully accessible to your followers, profile, etc. Any changes we make in the backend about eligibility and risk scoring will automatically apply to your pages.
IDK take 1$ payments to post the game without that issue or something if you have to.
We will never take payment to allow a developer to post a game.
Note: I mentioned unusual activity because because I see comments here with over a hundred up votes in a very short period, that’s not common for our community here, so I’m guessing there’s a thread or Discord somewhere telling people to pile into this post.
Thanks
I appreciate the elaborate answer and thanks for providing transparency on the workflow behind the scenes. I personally didn't experience problems with indexing, but many of my friends did (as shown in this thread).
One thing that could've helped is making this transparent not in support thread, but on developer dashboard itself. E.g. show indexing status near the game and if it is not indexed show the reason and approximate ETA of the game to be indexed. If ETA has passed show the button to ping support.
At the moment it is very frustrating and some people don't feel confident to write to support to clarify why their games don't get traction. In the world where AI generates tons of slope it is extremely important to give fair chance to the games that deserve it and I believe itch is the best platform to make this happen.
> the only decent platform for hobbyist developers
I don't *fully* agree with you as a fellow Dev.
Itch isn't just a platform for developers to publish their game, but also for *players* to actually play those games
Due to how straightforward the uploading process isz releasing malware on here should be pretty easy, yet I barely see anyone complaining about downloading anything malicious
Should the system get *too* lax, the moment players start being afraid they might be unsafe downloading off off itch, then it won't matter if the developers game would be indexed, because the players who actually play the games won't be able to trust said developers.
It would be like those dedicated advertising spaces where everyone is promoting their games, but no consumers are actually there to play them
While I *agree* that the current system has flaws that can be improved and, myself have had a game not being indexed on release, I think what we have is still better than the alternative of malware circulating around the platform freely
I don't see where you got the idea that I suggest making it more lax. I suggested having the KYC process before you publish a game if you want it to be indexed. If you don't want it to be indexed, it can stay whatever. Again, as you might've noticed, I never had that issue myself, and I'm here on behalf of the community. Don't give an excuse for leafo to let this go. Although he doesn't need one.
I find that, overall, the way itch has been treating search indexation lately is mental. This is the last resort for indie devs, and if you look at /recent its still tons of crap, so I feel like, why even bother idk... A lot of games just aren't getting indexed for unknown reasons. IF there's something at play (like reports or something) could you at least somewhat surface that data?
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the indexing issues are really frustrating. you spend a long time making a game and trying to prepare everything for release, and then it turns out you have to wait another two weeks to get indexed. and when the indexing disappears again after an update, it gets even more frustrating. i always appreciated itch.io because it let you quickly put your ideas out there. now it doesn't really feel that way anymore
it honestly makes me lose the desire to release things on this platform.
Your page isn’t indexed because you “disabled” the page with the “Disable new downloads & purchases”
Please check the getting indexed guide: /docs/creators/getting-indexed
Hope that helps
Your project is available for purchase, download, or is playable in the browser
Meaning if one of these are true, my page should be indexed. My game was playable in the browser meeting the third condition of the statement, the fact that I had available for purchase or download turned off should not have made a difference.
/docs/creators/getting-indexed#publishing-vs-indexing/getting-indexed
You haven’t limited access to the page via the Public access settings. If you select either “Disable new downloads & purchases” or “Unlisted in search & browse” then you are opting out of being eligible for indexing.
So you have conflicting documentation, and I would say arguably an edge case failure, where web only games should be able to disable downloads and purchases and still be indexed. We know that playing in the browser is != downloading because "disable downloads and purchases" active did not stop users from playing in the browser.
@leafo you have bent over backwards to explain why I was wrong, perhaps look to your own system and see what does not make sense.
Perhaps a banner at the top of the page of pages that aren't getting indexed that have a link to why they are not being indexed. That way its not a guessing game, we can see a non-indexed state.
Hi! Could you please tell, why my game is not indexed?
I spent alot of time making it solo.. i made it free, it is just first chapter, but i'm planning to do a large grim world
I tried to ask question here, but my thread got locked, tried to post to support mail, got no answer (
here is my game https://nop90h.itch.io/meatcube
It seems like this is a real problem. I released my first game three weeks ago, and it still hasn't been indexed. I'm guessing it has something to do with the Windows build, but unfortunately, I can't upload the game to the web due to the size of the content. Support is silent. Unfortunately, this significantly slows down testing the game, since random people can't access it and provide useful feedback. I understand that the site provides us with space and opportunity to post, but if it doesn’t actually work, then why should I post here specifically?
Have the same problem: "The CTR is gone, and the games aren't showing up in search."
Game: https://zevwax.itch.io/projectile-xp
Totally agree w/ the comments. The lack of transparency around indexation right now is incredibly frustrating
Just a random heads up, please don’t use CSS in a way that breaks the itch.io UI, scope your changes to the page container. This is explained here: /docs/creators/css-guide
We may remove your CSS access if you use it in a way that messes with the site UI.
Thanks!
