Product Hunt - cracking the algorithm

The PH algorithm is what decides if you make it to product of the day or not.

How they compute the score is not public, so here’s what we’ve gathered while preparing for our upcoming Product Hunt launch at Kairn. And it is pretty clear what PH likes, and what it doesn’t. The algo judges voters severely and can take away upvotes or give minus points if it thinks the voters are “not genuine”.

So here are 3 questions I would have loved to get answers and I think every future PH maker should ask her.himself. Would love to hear yours!

What are “non-genuine” votes according to the PH algorithm?

An upvote coming from a certain type of user can give you big time negative score:

• Upvoters freshly registered on PH (they came just for your page like your grandma who created a profile on d-day -or a few days ago without activity- to upvote your product)
• Upvoters with less than 5 followers
• Upvoters with no product upvoted recently or at all (those ghost users)
• Upvoters using direct links to upvote your product (this is actually not proven since on the official PH blog it says “It seems to be “common knowledge” that you’re punished for linking directly to your product page — it’s simply not true.”)

What the Product Hunt algorithm dislikes

❌ Automated upvoting
❌ Spikes in upvotes at the same time (that could mean you just sent a massive emailing campaign and it’s not natural upvotes)
❌ Upvoting without going to the product website (they track it if voter clicks on “Get it” before clicking on upvote)
❌ Hashtags and @ on Twitter or Facebook when posting about your launch. This is more for you than for the algo - mentions appear in blue and your product link (URL) on which you want people to click on is also blue so gets confusing...

What the Product Hunt algorithm likes

✅ Top Hunters / Influencers upvote and hunt (that’s why big reco to contact influencers 2 weeks before)
✅ Product Hunt staff who helps you elevate your story to the featured page (ping them too !)
✅ Comments and active discussions (add all people who participated in the project as makers and ask them to answer comments !!)
✅ Early votes during the day (early in PH day means 00:01am PST so they think you can’t raise people from their bed with marketing so it’s natural upvotes 🥱)
✅ Votes spread over the whole day
✅ People checking out your website
✅ Only personal PH accounts never company ones

Additional 2 things PH community loves (but harder for them to track)

• Product descriptions that fit with a specific type of user’s need. If you post generic descriptions you don’t get upvotes 🤯 make sure you use words and situations people can imagine themselves in
• 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 can attract a broad audience

If you observed or heard of other specificities and behaviours of the PH algorithm, or if you have another opinion about one of the characteristics I’ve mentioned, please share it so we can discuss it!

We’re trying to document our PH discovery on Twitter, if you wanna know more check our Twitter threads on it!