✨ do I deserve your follow? :) ✨ This project teaches you key details about the trending algorithm I discovered using a neural network (RankNet architecture, info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_to_rank ). -------------------- arrow keys or click to switch slides -------------------- [EDIT] A user pointed out to me how there's a discussion with more info about this topic, if you want to dig deeper have a look! https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/656956/ Document from MIT covering internals of the explore page: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/106393/967666601-MIT If you want to analyze scratch traffic in more detail: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&q=%2Fm%2F028167f&hl=en Here is some additional info about trending I gathered prior to this: Tags: It's impossible get on trending without using tags. Here are a few things I want you to know about tags before we continue. Spamming tags does nothing. Of all the times I was on trending, in none of them did I spam tags. It takes up space, makes you look generic, and doesn't help you up your ranks. I seriously have no idea why people keep doing it. Never use the #tutorials nor the #tutorial tag. The #tutorials tag and #tutorial tag actually STOP you from getting on trending! Its a common mistake for scratchers to add those in, hoping that this will increase the amount of categories their projects are displayed in. It works for every other tag, but #tutorials actually keeps you ONLY on the tutorials category, which of course nobody looks at :P How to use tags without using them. Ok, this certainly sounds stupid, but that's exactly what the trending algorithm is :P for some reason, you actually don't need the '#' before the tag names! so you can simply say 'games' instead of ''. What makes this overpowered is that you can get into irrelevant categories without people seeing the irrelevant tags! But this leads to a problem. If you thank, say, for making a tutorial on the game you just shared, the algorithm sees your game as having the tag because you mentioned the word 'tutorial'. To get around that, you can say 'thanks to for some of the code'. What is NFE? This is probably one of the most annoying tools the scratch team has. Basically, they can use it to take you off trending and search results without even notifying you! Here are the possible reasons: - having too many irrelevant tags - the project being a Fve Nghts at Frddy's game (note how I deliberately misspelled to avoid NFE) - if the project is sort of violent / inappropriate but not bad enough to be taken down - if the project was reshared a bunch of times to stay on trending There are tools out there that help you tell if your project has been rated NFE or not, however the ST doesn't like you mentioning them. Using instructions only, and why it's better: Using only instructions and leaving notes and credits or vice versa makes your project look better because, there's less space taken by the gap between the two boxes. What does it take to get on trending? To get on trending its good to get around 200 views and 60 loves in 24 hours. The 'reshare' glitch, debunked: The reshare glitch does exist but actually spam 'resharing' a project won't increase it's rank on trending like some people say. It will only speed up the time it takes for your project to index. Predicting trending: Scratch API method: One method of predicting trending is looking at the scratch API. For some reason it refreshes more often than the actual trending page resulting in 'predicted' results. 'Gaeilge' language method: Another method is setting your website language to 'Gaeilge'. For some reason it also refreshes faster than the actual trending page, so hitting explore will show you 'predicted' results. The 'Japan' hack, and why it's fake: Well, some people say that setting your location to Japan will get you higher chances of trending. But that's not true. Why then do so many Japanese projects get in trending? It seems like it's because a lot of Japanese people use the English website language, which makes their Japanese projects appear on the English trending page. Ok, but how to *get* to 60 loves and 240 views? This is actually easier than you might think. Here are some tips: - Make a very attractive thumbnail that has a vibrant colour scheme. (like the one on this project) - Constantly add your projects to as many studios as you possibly can. - (unethical) Make a studio promoting your project and spam add as many people in as possible - very effective but people don't like this. As you see, it's no rocket science, the more places you can find your project in, the more exposure, the better! Btw, advertising in comments is not effective. It takes ages and people rarely click on the links. credits: music - Titanium on pixabay
