photo credit: Luis Llerena If you’ve ever wondered how the WordPress Theme Directory identifies and ranks the themes that display under the popular tab, you might be surprised to learn that it has nothing to do with ratings. Popularity is a somewhat subjective quality to measure in the first place, but WordPress.org has an algorithm in place to give users an idea of which themes are trending.
The number of sites using a theme is the first metric that comes to mind for popularity, but it cannot be limited to that or else the results might be skewed towards older themes that are not in fact popular anymore. Samuel “Otto” Wood, in response to a Twitter thread about how themes appear to be gaming the system, created a video to explain how the popularity algorithm works.
“Popular is currently active installs divided by age of the theme and a few other factors,” Wood said. “Ratings don’t currently factor into it. We’re trying to work out an algorithm to add ratings to it. For the most part it’s a popularity thing.”
I asked him for more clarification on the other factors and he said it varies depending on what data they have and how
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/13704/wordpress-org-popular-themes-controversy-exposes-algorithm-weaknesses
source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/wordpress-org-popular-themes-controversy-exposes-algorithm-weaknesses/
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