I noticed today there were finally a couple of different comics featured in the Top 10 on the homepage (one of which I follow, so that was kind of an exciting treat to see), but I've honestly been curious to know how exactly does the Top 10 work? Because ever since I've been here, it seems like it's almost always been the exact same 10 comics, with maybe a random occasion once in a blue moon where there may be a different comic or two, but they won't last very long, and the list will always revert back to the exact same 10 comics. I've also noticed that certain elements seem to be inconsequential, for example, one comic presently in the Top 10 only has 25 pages and 2 likes, as opposed to others which may have hundreds of pages and several likes. So if page count or likes aren't necessarily a contributing factor, then how does it all work? Is it based on traffic, clicks, or something?

It's based on page views. So have over a few hundred page views and the comic gets vaulted into the top ten.
If the comic has a huge archive, one person reading it all can catapult the comic into the top ten. This has happened to a few of my archived completed comics. A comic has a thousand page archive, if one reader goes through it all in a one day marathon, the comic will be in the top ten when the ratings reset.

If the creator decides to drop a dozen new pages in one day and the readers of the comic read them all daily, that traffic will push the comic up in the ratings. A handful of readers may only look at all these new pages once a week, that also adds to the volume of page views increasing the ranking.

There are any number of ways to get the clicks other than real people actually accessing and reading the comic. It can.be very deceptive. A creator can fake the page views to put the comic into the top ten just so the comic is visible hoping to improve actual readership.

It's not really an accurate method of judging what's worth reading. I have my links to the Duck purposely set up so I never see the front page because of how fake the top ten is to me. I mean after all my comics have ended up in there a handful of times and that has never translated into actual readership.

When all is said and done, what is popular is a poor way to judge what is objectively worth a bucket of warm spit.

I don't look at it either. I got a PQ from a friend once, congratulating me on making the top 10. I checked my views and they were only just over 600, so it must've been a quiet day on The Duck. As Bravo pointed out you can probably get yourself into the top 10 by repeatedly visiting your own pages enough times. Try it if you've got the time and instead of cheating, we'll call it research!

I think there was some talk of changing the way the top 10 works, to get more variety when the site is updated. Don't know if that's still a thing or not.

That does make a bit of sense, but yeah, like I say, it would be nice to see just a little more variety in the Top 10 a little more often.

The reason why I see the homepage is because I also like to keep tabs on what's going on with site news in terms of featured comics, Panel by Panel, other write-ups, and now Creator Interviews. That, and admittedly, Quail's Random will introduce me to different comics that I find are definitely worth checking out . . . it's just that more often than not, they turn out to be comics that haven't been updated in over 10 years, and may only have a couple dozen pages at most.