Understanding the Product Hunt Algorithm 🤖
With @MathildeBeccat we’re working on the launch of Kairn, the daily project management tool to achieve your goals.
What’s Product Hunt? It’s a platform where softwares meet their users for the first time. That’s where you kick start your marketing as users upvote their favorite product of the day. We’ll be doing a serie on learning how to launch on PH, this is #1 — Understanding the algorithm.
The Product Hunt (PH) Algorithm 🤖 decides your score to see if you make it to product of the day or not (on top of votes of course…). The computation is not public, but it judges products severely and can give minus or bonus points depending on what you do.
Here are our findings from discussing with teams that rocked and crashed their launches 🤓.
The Algorithm gives minus points to “non-PH lovers” 👎
- Upvoters freshly registered on PH (came just for your page like your digital grandma 👵 )
- Upvoters with less than 5 followers (considered uncool? 😑)
- Upvoters with no product upvoted recently or at all (those PH ghosts 👻)
- We’ve seen people say that voters using direct links to your PH page from social media gives you minus points instead of searching for your page on PH. This is actually not proven and seems to be a rumour-ish.
Our reco? Introduce your audience to Product Hunt before your launch and help them see the value of the community and participate “for real”.
The Algorithm feels cheated by fake user behaviors => minus ⛔️
- Automated upvoting 🤖
- Spikes in upvotes at a specific time (it believes it could mean massive emailing campaign — track your upvotes with Product Wars)
- Upvoting without going to the product website (it’s said to track if voter click on “Get it” before upvoting to check your product and only vote if they liked it) => quite a lot of people said that but hard to see if it’s true
- Voters coming from a multitude of different sources (it could show you’re posting intensely on many communities to attract the eye)
- Asks for upvotes — big ⛔️ — PH wants the community to help you build the best product and not just be #1 so you’re not supposed to ask for upvotes but rather support / comments / help
Our reco? Make sure you don’t activate all your channels at once simultaneously, plan it for the whole day and ask for support 🙏
What makes the Algorithm ❤ ️go happy-merry ❤
- Top Hunters upvotes and hunt (big reco to contact them 2 weeks before)
- PH staff who helps you elevate your story (we heard they are Super — Duper nice, reach out to them)
- Comments and active discussions on your product page (add everyone who worked on the app as makers and ask them to answer too)
- Early votes during the day (early for PH means 00:01am PST — having early votes looks more natual as they think you can’t rise people from their bed with marketing so it’s true upvotes 🥱 )
Last, what the PH community loves 🥰 => won’t get you extra score but more votes
- Product descriptions that fit with a specific type of users and not generic ones made for everyone and no one
- Making it personal on social networks — “I just launched my first product!”, “After months of hard work, we’re ready to share what we’ve been working on…” resonates with people and attracts a broad audience
- Personal PH accounts never company ones
That’s it for our PH Algorithm discoveries. Hope it helps you and we’d love to hear your findings in comments. As for us, we’ll soon be launching, check our Ship (pre-launch) page and can’t wait for you to discover Kairn very soon 💥
Mat & Pat 👋
From Kairn, helping you ignite that “Go Get It Tiger” feeling everyday.
