Some outfits don't just do fake searches but also fake downloads. E.g. visit https://bintray.com/groovy/maven/groovy/view/statistics#stat... then click on date range "1 year" and wonder why the daily download numbers suddenly multiplied by 10 in late May. You'll have trouble believing the 2.5 million download number for Groovy from Bintray, and wonder how long they've been running the same ploy with Maven.