In reply to PP.

It is actually very simple: GoDaddy bundles their own themes into every WordPress website that is built by their clients.
So their themes are used “by default” by hundreds of thousands of empty “under construction” domains, including some real websites too.

After a year or so, they submit the theme to the free repository, and once it goes live, the theme starts with 20,000+ active installs on day 1. This means that the theme immediately jumps to Top 10 “Popular” themes and stays there for at least half a year.

Now imagine that every WordPress user in the world, no matter where they are hosted, when they go to their Dashboard > Themes page, the first 10-20 themes at the top are dominated by GoDaddy themes.

I don’t think it is fair to call this “gaming the system”, as it doesn’t break any existing rules. But it is obvious that the “Popular” tab is misleading and serves a vague purpose.

Unless you have a big agency and community behind you, real, good quality and focused themes can never reach the Popular tab, which is a huge traffic source.

Besides being a traffic source, the Popular tab also serves as an entry for new WordPress users. Many of them don’t know any better what is popular or not. And here they see the software itself recommending a list of POPULAR themes, most of which come from the same devs, with the same features and same approach.