Game no longer shows up on search

Reproduction Steps

Browser information: Occurs on Chrome and on Roblox mobile app.

Search for my game name “Type or Die” in the search bar.

Expected Behavior

I expect the search to show games related to what I searched for.

Actual Behavior

It’s showing games that aren’t related to the search term. The game has an avg of 2k ccu and still isn’t showing up. This is making it harder for my players to come back to the game.

It’s worth noting if you search “Type Die” instead of “Type or Die” in the search the game is ranked #1. I’m not sure why when you search the exact term it doesn’t show.



Issue Area: Roblox Website
Page URL: Type or Die - Roblox
Impact: Very High
Frequency: Constantly
Date First Experienced: 2022-11-09 00:11:00 (-05:00)

13 Likes

The algorithm probably doesn’t like the word “die” which could contribute to this.
Although that being said searching “type or” will come up with a game called “Type or die” as #1 which only has 6 players which is pretty weird
image

1 Like

Thats what the sort used to look like when you searched “Type or Die”. It was a little annoying being ranked #4 for an exact search with games that have no players above it. But now it’s straight up not discoverable.

Happened to me too in my game Slither Simulator.

Tracking it in this issue here:

2 Likes

this happened to me around 3 days ago, I contacted the roblox support and they fixed this issue, this happens a lot with new games (a lot of people are having the same problem in these days)

3 Likes

I am currently shadow banned. Help 911 @Focia19
Usually my game is the first result in a search for “slither”. Today it is not listed at all

@FirstVertex @RyanSch02

We checked both “slither” and “type or die” keywords, and we found nothing wrong internally, it actually works fine on our end! Images below:

Closing this thread, as there is nothing wrong here!

2 Likes

@Focia19 The nature of this problem is that it is intermittent. Bans in traffic from search and from Continue and Friend Activity last between 1 hour to 6 hours, with sometimes a large, noticeable drop in traffic that is not normal. Perhaps you did not observe the discovery at the time when the issue was occurring. Can we at least agree to not close this thread so quickly, so that we will have a place to message about this issue if it occurs again? I propose a 14 day time frame, if possible. Thank you for considering it.

2 Likes

I removed the timer, and will keep this thread open for you and others to report when this will happen again! But, if the issue happens very rarely, and we are not able to reproduce the bug, I’m afraid there will be low chances in finding the root cause (if any)!

4 Likes

This appears similar to this other issue that has been reported since June.

This issue is also unresolved, and other hardworking developers are negatively impacted. The theory proposed in that thread, is that the shadow ban occurs after pushing multiple game code updates in succession.

When we consider all of these issues together, perhaps it does indicate a potentially serious issue worth investigating as a relatively high priority. As always, thank you for your help @Focia19

1 Like

This issue has also occurred for my game, A World Reborn RPG Alpha, where it does not show up if you search for the exact name of the game. However, it works for other games that I have, like Imperial Roblox.

Hey @Focia19

My game Soccer Street Strikers has been affected by this issue.

Since November 3rd, my game got removed from the search results today despite the fact that yesterday it used to rank 37th on the keyword “soccer”. Right when it reached 4,000 average daily new players which coincides with the moment I updated the description of my game, the experience got shadow-banned.

image

You can search the full name of the experience and scroll all the way down and you will still not find it. The timing is not very convenient for my game since the exponential growth was only starting yesterday. It got removed off the search all of a sudden and players can no longer find the game since I can see the knock off versions gaining popularity.

The root cause could potentially be linked to updating the description too quickly since it happened to me right when I’ve updated the description 2-3 times really fast to fix a typo, so I suppose the algorithm pretty much flags the experience as a “spam” experience.

Your help is requested & appreciated!

2 Likes

Hey @R_obotz

One of our engineers found out that your (hidden) name field is full of spammy keywords:

Soccer Street Strikers Hockey Sport Police Job Fight Anime Goal Kick Fun Barbie Rescue Zombie Tower of Hell Jailbreak Sim NFL Clash King High Youtuber Food Basketball Toys FPS Vibes Club Iris Restaurant Cooking Thief Level Tycoon Obby Modded Simulator Secret Da Hood Gun Boxing Lifting Hacker Clash Arena Anarchy Burger Catalog Iron Blood Heaven Criminal Ragdoll Hangout Pets Magic Kick Off Super League Royale Queen Hunt Infection GTA 6 Roleplay Goalkeeper Bank Destroy Tycoon Obby Modded Simulator Secret Da Hood Gun

Because of our spam filter, your experience is being filtered out. If these terms are removed, it should appear in search again!

5 Likes

Hello, do you think you could look at my game, too? It used to be one of the first results when you searched for the word “army” but in August it got dramatically reduced in that to being around the 100th result. I guess I’m worried something in the game bio triggered being filtered out, too. Thanks

Was this spam filter added on Monday, November 6, 2022? This newly added spam filter could heavily affect my game by losing over 3x daily active users. [🎃CODES] Digimon Masters - Roblox

This is not a spam game. It is one of the oldest games on ROBLOX that modernized over time. Suppose you could ask the engineer to check over. It would be beneficial. This game also helped the development of skinned mesh technology in its early stages.

The engineer didn’t find anything wrong with your experiences @OmegaInvictissimus, @nakata1609!

Searching for: “Digimon Masters”

And actually searching for “British Army”, increases the chances of finding your experience by a lot:

Also, your experience is fixed now, @Ravenorr!

Since the majority of the reported issues here are not real bugs (not even the original post), I’m putting a lock timer of 14 days!

2 Likes

Thanks, but until August it was in the top 10 results for just the word “army” and then in mid to late August it was drastically dropped and it reduced traffic to my experience substantially. That’s what my issue has been.

Wayback machine link demonstrating this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220605144217/https://www.roblox.com/discover/?Keyword=army

Hey! My game Construction Simulator! 👷 - Roblox does not show on search when you look up Construction Simulator (and I’ve tried on different accounts, had my friends check, etc) and it’s shown other games with no players at the top before and they were jumping in players. This is has been very difficult for growth as big youtubers have made videos and left the name in the video but not the link, and when they go to search for the game they can’t find it.
image

1 Like

Will have your experience checked starting tomorrow!

1 Like

It is not ok to shadow ban an experience silently.

At the time the description was submitted, the system should reject the update, if it is going to cause the game to be banned. Instead, the sus description was accepted by the Experience settings form, without notifying the Dev that they had included something that could cause their experience to silently have all the traffic drained, without knowing why, what triggered it, when, or how to fix it.

This creates an environment of distrust where I have to constantly check whether my game has been silently banned by Roblox, after a legitimate update to my description.

Roblox needs to do more to inform a Dev when their experience has problems, especially to the point where it is de-listed from Discovery. Majority of Devs, including myself, want to play fair and have an experience description that is informative and relevant, and updated frequently. My game has been affected by this issue, but it does not have “spammy keywords” in the description, but I do feel my stress levels rise, when I have to update my game’s description, because in the past that triggered a lot of struggle to recover from the damage done to being totally un-discoverable.

Can we please look at the form where updates to the Experience Description are submitted, and cause a validation error to occur if it is possible the text would trigger a shadow ban?

Can we please send a notice to the Dev when their Experience is de-listed, so that they can have a trigger to take action, without feeling the need to constantly monitor whether they have been banned? It would be helpful to have additional information in that notice about WHY the ban occurred, so the Dev is empowered to fix their experience in a timely manner.

This may not be considered a bug, but the current process is not acceptable either. Thus, I think this still should be looked at by a Roblox engineer because it represents a broken interaction between the Dev and Roblox with ample room for improvement.

6 Likes