This is important not just for myself, but for anyone struggling to get their posts showing in Tumblr searches. This is an email I received from Tumblr responding to me asking about the rules that govern posts being hidden from public searches, I hope this helps anyone dealing with the issues that I have been dealing with.
“Hello,
Thank you for reaching out and letting us know.
The factors that contribute to appearing in search on Tumblr are complex and change almost daily, as we make improvements to provide the best results. So while the exact criteria may be different at any given moment, here are some factors that always affect what appears in search results:
- Whether you’re looking at top or recent search results (“top” meaning our most popular posts, and recent meaning the posts appear with the most recent ones first). In the app you can switch between them by tapping those options underneath the search bar, and on the web they’re at the top left of the search results.
- Whether “Hide <blog name> from search results" is disabled on that blog’s settings page.
- Original post vs. reblog (only original posts will show up in search results).
- Number of tags on the post (the first 20 tags on a post will be indexed in recent and top searches, and that blog’s own tag pages, but only the first five will be indexed in tag search results, like searching for “#stuff” rather than “stuff”).
- Whether the post employs any tactics often used by spam blogs (like using an excessive amount of trending tags at one time, for example).
- How often that blog’s been posting on a particular tag or search page (if you've made multiple posts in a given public tag, only a few might show up together between other blogs for that search).
- Any links in the post (some links may cause posts to be hidden from recent search results).Number of post notes (for top search results only, not recent).”