Roblox Search Optimization

[idkhowtocode]

Hello to my developer compatriots,

I’m on team behind Workout Island. The game has received some YouTube attention, but it appears that nobody can find the game through the roblox search. This means that our reach is limited to sponsors or friends following friends.

I know that there are lots of complaints about search. We chalked it up to the game being so new, but this fake game:

managed to get themselves to show up at the top of search. Any idea how they achieved this?

Thanks –

[Wsly]

Have you tried removing the emoji at the start of your game name? That might throw off the searching algorithm.

The Roblox search algorithm has been long known for not providing the best results. However, even with searching the exact name of your game and it having a much higher number of concurrent players, it still doesn’t show up above empty games with the same name. In fact, it doesn’t show up at all.

This seems to be a platform-level bug that is hard to resolve by the developer. There’s little known information on how the search results are ranked, and considering the game is currently home to over 800 concurrent players it should show up on top.

Relevant bug reports;

New Games Do Not Show Up In Roblox Search

Hey developers, The search algorithm was updated in December. All of the games reported in this thread are now showing up correctly in the search results for me. Do you have any more examples of popular games that don’t show up correctly in the search results?

Game Blacklisted From Search

My new game appears to be blacklisted from search, on all platforms. When searching a metonym of the title or even the title in full, it appears nowhere on the search results. This drastically effects the Xbox traffic, potential traffic from YouTubers, and general exposure. People are even using this as a tool to phish unknowing players into buying a pseudo game advertised as ours since it comes up near the top of the search results. Appreciate if this could be solved quickly

[idkhowtocode]

Thanks for the suggestion. I removed the emoji temporarily and will see if the search rankings change in the next couple hours.

I checked out some of those bug reports, its really unfortunate as we’re losing tons of potential players. The comment sections of youtube videos with 100k+ views are filled with “how to find the game??”

[SynxChazz]

It seems like the problem has been fixed now and it shows on top regardless of whether the title has an emoji or not.

Yesterday I noticed that the game would appear on search, but it was buried by dozens of other games. Today it has finally reached the top.

[DMCPEPlays (dmc)]

I agree with @Wsly. Also, the Roblox search algorithm is based on something else: the most times a word shows up the higher will get to the search results. This is why you see games have the original game name repeatable.

[Affenity (Visual)]

I’m not completely sure, but as far as I know, the search is based on keywords (like group search), that can be why search results generally return “incorrect” responses.