Hoping someone might be able to help me out. I designed and published fillable letter trays and starting getting downloads, prints and even a couple boosts. It was comping up near the top of searches for “letter boxes”. I was looking at the settings and changed the licensing to the most restrictive option (no remakes and no commercial). The rate of views, downloads, and prints immediately dropped. I’ve switched the licensing back to Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike, and submitted a support ticket. The support came back with a generic response that there are no issues or restriction on my model.
Questions:
1 - Did changing the licensing cause Bambu to drop my model in the search algorythms?
2 - How can I get it back to the top of the search list. There can’t be that many models with “letter boxes” as a tag. In fact a Valentines themed model of the letter boxes still shows up fairly high in the search results and it only got a few downloads and prints.
Here is the model: Letter Boxes - Free 3D Print Model - MakerWorld
Any comments or help would be greatly appreciated.
I would just like to point out, that this doesn’t have to be the case for you, but it could be: the search algorithm is constantly adapting. In other words, it learns which users are a good fit for you. It’s possible that the change has triggered the algorithm to kick in - for better or worse.
Especially when I see how you’ve spammed tags with general terms, which is pretty much penalised now. A few precise tags are great, but tag spamming is one of the worst mistakes you can make.
With all due respect, I doubt that, as there are much stronger designs that are of course displayed first, with thousands of downloads and prints. Your model with 35 prints can’t compete with that. Simply because the name “Letter Boxes” is so generic that it can be found hundreds of times on MakerWorld - 830 to be precise..
Since you don’t have that many downloads yet, it would probably be best to delete the model, wait a few days, and then re-enter it into the system properly. With sensible name and tags.
By the way, your model can still be found in the search, but it’s hidden deep in the depths of the system. With so few downloads and such strange tags, it’s just way, way down the list. To be precise, you are the last one. Your model was probably classified as irrelevant because the system doesn’t know what to do with it.
When I sort by download, it’s a little better, but still far from being easy to find.
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Thanks for the feedback! Interesting points. It could be a coincident, but the fact that it literally dropped from the search when I changed the licensing makes me think that’s what affected the algorithm. Like I stated in the OP, it was coming up in the first 5 items on the search prior to changing the license (which I’ve changed back). I might delete and repost if it doesn’t start getting traction again.
Yeah, but you’re not an AI, so you know that correlation does not imply causation. 
The thing it that their search is likely some for of BM25 or even a semantic search these days. The default sort is “Relevance,” which doesn’t really tell us much. It’s not documented what MakerWorld means by it. If a lot of people find your model but leave without downloading, the relevance in the “eyes” of the algorithm starts to drop.
That’s just a straight forward sort by downloads… if you have 50 downloads, everyone with 50+ downloads will come first. Also, searching “tag: letter box” is very different from searching “letter box”.
Exactly, that’s what my comment says… what are you trying to tell me? 
That’s why I left it in the screenshots so that everyone can see it. I even compared what comes up when you enter “letter box” (830 results - first image) and, for comparison, “tag: letter box.” (second and third image).
What are you trying to tell me? 
Thanks for all the in-depth analysis! 
The fact is, it dropped like a rock and my “visits” on creator center reflect it. I’m definitely a newbie, but it was fun watching the visits, downloads and prints climb. Like I said it was top 5 of the search with “letter boxes” and completely disappeared. Now it’s at the bottom. It could be coincidence, but I’ve got two other models with the same tag and they both show up, one of them at the top and it only has 1 print and 2 downloads. Something happened to downgrade the model in their algorithms. I’ll give it a couple days and then likely delete, wait a day or two and publish it as a new model.
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I do remember that Bambu announced changes a while ago aimed at, among others (like penalizing tag spamming), increasing exposure for new models. Specifically, exposure was significantly increased during the first 7 days.
So just in case that drop happend after the first 7 days, it may have been due to that initial boost expiring.
& 
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