false advertising

this isnt the #1 rated theme but they advertise it as so (it’s more along the lines of #870 rated theme)… are they allowed to do this?

I don’t think it’s false. They claim to be #1 in terms of rating out of the top selling themes. I am curious where you got your #870 figure, source please.

The theme’s rating is 4.96. Even Avada doesn’t have anywhere near that good of a rating. I didn’t check every top selling theme but of the random ones I checked none had a rating better than 4.96.

i originally thought that too but they state “No.1 out of 9,500+” and as of now there is just shy of 10,000 items under WordPress.

this is further reinforced if you look at an archived copy of the product page from May 1st and compare it with the number of items in the WordPress category on May 1st:
Ark
WordPress items

source is ThemeForest: https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress?page=28&referrer=search&sort=rating&utf8=✓&view=grid (all WordPress themes ordered by best rating; 30 items per page * 28 page = 840) it would have fluctuated since i originally posted this.

They don’t specifically mention that they only used WordPress themes in their analysis. They could be including items from other categories, or even other websites. It’s hard to say because their claim has no supporting documentation.

But a more advanced search on ThemeForest shows them at #4 in WordPress category (though they’re #1 if you sort this search by highest sales and best rated). It’s just really hard to decide it’s a false claim without knowing more about their ‘study’.

Unfortunately the link you provided is not really valid, because that will include any top rated themes (even with 5 sales) - those aren’t top sellers.

Maybe you can contact them and inquire about it.