Definition
The Spotlight badge is Atlassian Marketplace's curated-editorial designation, awarded to apps Atlassian's marketplace team selects for visibility in the rotating featured rails on Atlassian's homepage and category browse pages. Unlike the algorithmic Bestseller and Rising Star badges, Spotlight is editorially chosen — Atlassian highlights apps for thematic reasons (a security focus, an accessibility milestone, a recent major launch) rather than pure sales velocity. The badge is publicly visible on the listing tile, on the app's detail page, and inside Atlassian's category leaderboards, and it disappears when Atlassian rotates a fresh cohort in (typically every 4-6 weeks; some thematic Spotlights run shorter). AppRanks tracks Spotlight assignments via Atlassian's `?marketingLabel=` URL parameter and surfaces gain/loss events in the app's Featured Placements section with the exact crawl date. The Shopify-side analogue is the editorial Staff Pick rail and the New & Noteworthy collection; the AppRanks data model unifies both under a single "editorial featured" event type so cross-platform comparisons stay clean.
Where you see it on AppRanks: Atlassian app page "Featured Placements" section, app audit badge check.
Why this metric matters
Spotlight is the highest-quality discovery signal on Atlassian Marketplace because it bypasses the install-volume bias that dominates the Bestseller leaderboard. New apps with strong differentiation can land on Spotlight in their first month; Bestseller typically takes 6-12 months of consistent install velocity. For developers, getting on Spotlight is the fastest path from zero to marketplace visibility — and tracking when competitors land it surfaces what Atlassian's marketplace team is currently rewarding (a security focus, an industry-vertical push, etc.).
How AppRanks computes it
AppRanks polls Atlassian Marketplace's category endpoints with `?marketingLabel=spotlight` daily. Apps appearing under that filter get a Spotlight=true marker stamped against the snapshot date. When a subsequent crawl no longer surfaces the app under the filter, AppRanks records a Spotlight-loss event with the inferred date range. Refresh cadence: every 24 hours, UTC midnight, with hourly retry on transient marketplace errors.
Use cases
- Competitive watch: a competitor gaining Spotlight is typically a 4-6 week visibility window — track the install-velocity delta during that window to size the placement's real value before optimizing your own pitch.
- Editorial pitch timing: Atlassian rotates Spotlight cohorts on a regular cadence; tracking the rotation rhythm helps developers time their pitch outreach for maximum signal-to-noise.
See also: Featured placement: how editorial rails work · Built for Shopify: the Shopify-side quality badge · Browse Atlassian apps with badge filters
External references: Atlassian Spotlight program (developer documentation) · Atlassian Marketplace home (where Spotlight rotates)