Pretty good overview of tags on steam.

Things I would add:

The "suggest prioritzation" button in the tag wizard is something we added for people who have no idea how to order things. It's not a crystal ball, but it will give you better results than a random or totally uninformed sorting.

If you know what you're doing, go ahead and manually order things -- that's the better choice.

Also -- remember to just tag your games *accurately*. I know there's temptation to "optimize" but you'll just hurt yourself in the end and waste time if you try to "trick" the algo.

And not for any magical reason other than that you'll be misrepresenting your content to customers.

I agree with Chris' discourse on "poison pills" for instance, but the takeaway is -- don't HIDE a "poison pill" feature if it's core to your game.

Like, if your game is violent, be UP FRONT about that. If your game is anime, be UP FRONT about that.

But if your game isn't really any of those things, don't stick those tags on thinking it will help you or broaden your appeal b/c it won't.

Also to my knowledge Query Expansion isn't available everywhere yet, it's opt-in. When it is you don't have to worry about redundant tags like adding Action and RPG if you already have Action RPG, but for now you still have to do that. Leave redundants in, but lower priority.

(Query Expansion IS available everywhere by default on http://GameDataCrunch.com  but that's not going to help you sell any more copies)

Also no amount of tag manipulation is going to make up for all the rest of the stuff that goes into a successful game. It will just help you with basic visibility and not actively sabotaging yourself.

But another major part of tag optimization that doesn't get mentioned is -- if your game is classified correctly it helps CURATORS find it and it include it.

This involves Valve staff picking titles for promotions, and OTHER DEVS running bundles and sales around a theme/genre.

So if you're a "Cooking" game and not using the new "Cooking" tag, I suggest you get on that now.