I’ve noticed my ThemeForest sales have plumeted recently. I have a hotel template, which was regularly in the top 5 search results and had a high volume of sales compared to other similar templates.
Now, search results are favouring Elite Authors, even showing results from 2012 - 2013 that don’t have frequent sales anymore. My template has been removed from the first page entirely for some searches. I would think that fresh designs with a high frequency of sales and good reviews would be more important than older designs by top authors.
I’m hoping others can confirm this and Envato can let us know what is happening. Some kind of clarification on how the search algorithm works would be helpful also, so we can properly SEO our items. I have a WordPress theme version of my HTML template ready to go, but I’m hesitant to release it yet.
Noticed the same thing with our theme, before this change our theme had a regular sales volume per week, after this change older items by a power elite author appears on the top results and our sales have dropped dramatically. It seems they don’t hear our voices regarding this change for ThemeForest search system.
Yeah that sucks. It doesn’t make sense for them to do this, as the top items aren’t necessarily the most popular. Envato would only be losing sales with this method, not to mention they are paying a higher commission to elite authors.
For example, one of the top ‘hotel’ templates is from 2012 (by an elite author) and has only had roughly 20 sales in the past 12 months. It has a lower user rating and was previously way down in search results.
Mine on the other hand has had over 560 since being uploaded in March and has a higher user rating. Since the algorithm change, outdated and unpopular items including this one from 2012 are being favoured, and my sales are now way down.
It’s the same for AudioJungle. A whole list of dinosaur items with massive sales (for certain search terms). It’s devastating for new items. Would be great to know what’s going on…