I've once brought up the topic with the Italki team and they mentioned that there's nothing of that sort, however, (I'm going to share a secret right now) I noticed that the more active you are on the discussion's forum the more students book a class with me.

As others have said there is a discussion on the teachers forum about this. It has affected the majority of us in a negative way. There is not much that seems to work to change anybody’s position on the list. It seems like a game of luck . Many teachers who are booked and busy don’t even contribute to the community or discussions. Go to the discussion and see all our grievances.

You need to go to the teachers forum - there is a topic there which covers this in great detail: The long and short of it is:

Because there is no such thing has truly random, in so far as computer generated randomness is concerned. Even if italki were using any of the built in random functions there would still be a pattern that emerges. I seem to get the same teachers recommended over and over more often than any others.

It stays like this for a while and then a slightly different pattern seems to emerge for a short while. This is true of all computers and all randomness. A very technical topic/subject.

Part of the reason you sometimes see a pattern emerge in teacher suggestions is because the randomness is based upon time. 24 hours a day. so you might see different teachers at different times of the day. You will not get the sort of randomness as for picking lottery tickets spinning in a drum, or throwing leaves into the air and selecting the first one to land.

And to incorporate what Joe said into this answer, you should expect to get students who live within a three 3 hour time zone difference.

There have been other teachers who have said I can't get any new teachers, they were advised to be active in the discussions and answers, and now they have students.

I realised that it combines few things.

What Amro said is also important. If you will be active on the website as an user (discussion board, answers on question board, corrections of the notes) you will find more students for sure. More students means more opinions and so one.

I also discovered today something interresting. Yesterday I was checking how many teachers and tutors from Australia and Canada we've got here. I did that simply just for fun but today I realised that when i opened the list of the teachers and tutors ... teachers and tutors from these two countries were picked up on the list I saw.