The bots have been exploiting the search algorithm to rank higher in the search results. I’m not sure how they’re doing it, this is something that the engineers are going to have to figure out. I searched for “Skywars” and the term “Skywars” isn’t mentioned in many of these games’ title/description. There are many games that are doing this and you can see for yourself here. The search results used to be better, but recently these games have taken over without any relevance to the search term. The screenshot below demonstrates what the problem is.
The first game is still first in the search results because of how large it is, but the other games have been taken over. The second game on the list is now 14th on the list because there are 12 games in its way that have exploited the search algorithm.
Maybe it is because people just spam “tags” in the descriptions. Like if you look on some cheap obby games they just have at the bottom of the description.
“Tags: Build, Obby, tycoon, skywars, shirts, trade, minecraft, games, etc.” They would be a lot more irrelevant tags for an actual one.
I thought that was the case for a while, but if you see a lot of them, their description has no tags in it. I think there is an exploit in the system where maybe they can create a tons of places under the game and they spam a ton of tags in those games. I’m not really sure what else it can be. I’d be super happy if Roblox could look into this!
When will this be addressed? My game is struggling with this. We’ve done everything we can to get us higher, but we are still being pushed very low due to these kinds of games.
There is a lot more. This is very frustrating as discovery of our game is pretty much impossible as searching up the direct words in the title doesn’t bring the game up, and instead shows results for Vibe Games, Theme Parks, Showcases, and yes, even Horror games. It’s impossible for players to naturally find our game without advertisements or sponsors. Even if it’s spread through word of mouth, players cannot find it by searching the name.
I created a parody game called Shortest Answer Wins. Yesterday or the day before, the game was #3 in when you searched for those the game’s name. Today, when you search for it, a bunch of irrelevant games come in and my game is no where to be seen.
I even scroll down to reveal hundreds of games and when I searched for “Shortest Answer Wins,” there wasn’t a single result beyond the words I typed to search for it.
i’ve filed numerous tickets about situations where the search is completely broken and the response from roblox search team is that it is ‘working as intended’. For a platform that relies so much on discovery, having the worst search in the industry is quite ridiculous, but I guess they are proud of the current state of search? So we get to continue to enjoy the constant stream of unrelated titles to what we searched, our own games being randomly buried/‘delisted’ for our exact title keywords, etc.
Awesome to see this has finally been fixed. Now when I search for the word “Poop” it shows only the relevant matching games (cos we made Poop Simulator):
This issue still is not fixed. Maybe add a few search filters like most popular, by category or something so people can find the games that they are looking for.
I doubt they are interested in fixing it. By promoting the popular (and most profitable) games they increase revenue. That then puts the problem of discoverability firmly on us the developers.
Not that long ago I had 2 games that would appear in the top 10 when the relevant keyword was searched. Now I am lucky if they appear in the top 100 and the garbage returned from search has no match criteria.
I think the search function goes:
Player searches for “X” criteria
Roblox search returns top 100 games plus a handful matching the search term “X”
Profit
If anyone has any evidence to the contrary I would be very interested to hear it.
Hi all, thanks for reporting this issue and for your patience.
We recently launched a search relevance improvement in April. While we have ways to go to make the results optimal, we hope this marks the end of the “obby takeover”.
Search relevance is a top priority for the search team and we’re actively working towards improving it. We’ll share more updates on the forum as we make progress.
