Steam "More Like This" Broken? How to Repair Your Tag Hierarchy

When the "More Like This" widget at the bottom of your Steam store page displays unrelated genres, random shovelware, or $70 AAA blockbusters, your algorithmic discovery is broken. Learn how Steam calculates tag similarity and how to repair your tag hierarchy.

1. The Math Behind Steam's Recommendation Engine

Steam does not understand your game by reading your lore or watching your trailer. Its recommendation algorithm treats each game as a mathematical vector based on its 20 user tags and community tag weights:

The Generic Tag Poison: Tags like Indie, Singleplayer, Action, Adventure, and 2D are attached to over 60,000 games on Steam. If you put "Indie" or "Action" in your top 5, you dilute your recommendation vector into general noise, causing Steam to recommend completely random titles.

2. Symptoms of a Broken Tag Hierarchy

Check the "More Like This" carousel at the bottom of your store page and your Steamworks traffic breakdown:

3. The 4-Tier Tag Hierarchy Architecture

To train the algorithm to cluster your game with high-selling peers in your niche, organize your 20 tags across 4 strict tiers:

4. Step-by-Step Tag Repair Protocol

1. Audit Your Top 5 Competitors: Identify 3 to 5 breakout games that share your exact target audience. Run their URLs through Steam Page Auditor to inspect their tag profiles and shared tag overlap.
2. Open Steamworks Partner Portal: Navigate to Edit Store Page → Basic Info → Tags.
3. Purge Generic Tags from Top 5: Remove Indie, Casual, Action, or Singleplayer from the first 5 slots. Replace them with your specific subgenre tags.
4. Fill All 20 Slots: Leaving slots empty forfeits organic search volume and recommendation surface area.
5. Moderate Community Tags: Check if players have applied joke or misleading tags (e.g., "Psychological Horror" on a farming game). Click the flag icon in Steamworks to downvote or hide inappropriate community tags.
6. Allow 7–14 Days for Algorithmic Re-indexing: Steam takes 1 to 2 weeks to recompute similarity matrices across millions of store pages. Track your "More Like This" changes weekly.

5. Before & After Tag Hierarchy Teardown

6. How Steam Page Auditor Evaluates Check #9: Tags

Under Check #9: Tags (Weight 10), our automated audit engine executes strict rule validation:

• Scores tags >= 15 as healthy, but penalizes pages with fewer than 15 tags (slots 16–20 are free discovery reach).
• Inspects the top 5 tag array against our built-in generic tag dictionary (Indie, Casual, Singleplayer, Action, Adventure, 2D, etc.).
• Penalizes scores by 3 points if 3 or more generic tags occupy the top 5 positions, warning of imminent "More Like This" degradation.