Even with the default sort “by best match”, some strange, irrelevant (often, some very old) items appear at the top of search results.
And in the search results list, two new parameters now appear at the end of each item URL (s_phrase and s_rank), they weren’t there before. The s_phrase in not even populated in the search results list for some items…
To see for yourself, just search for some term on themeforest/codecanyon and check the URLS of the items in the list, one by one, from top to bottom.
Yes. It’s an unannounced change they made to make their search more “relevant” (as per the Discovery team). The returned results are pretty bad, however. With items dating back to 2009 and 2010 as top results for quite a few queries, it’s anything but relevant to the current buyers.
Yes and since this change sales are very poor for us. Our item now appears below too old items, this changes doensn’t make sense since buyers want updated and fresh design on ThemeForest. Hope they hear our voices.
Yes, it’s definitely affecting ThemeForest as well. I started another post about this here: Search Algorithm Favouring Elite Authors. They’re basically favouring outdated items that are by elite authors.