Likely there is a combination of factors:

First, as MX is catered mostly for a bit aged computers, it is likely the demographics of users are a bit more aged that other distros like CachyOS (which by the way, it is now in the crest of a wave, signaling Distrowatch ranking is not correlated with market share.)

Also, the fact that many of us are pondering about MX’s high ranking, we are also clinking on it more that we would on Ubuntu or Mint so feeding the impressions count.

Similarly, when a post like this is brought up, a bunch of use go to Distrowatch and click on it to see info about MX.

Also a regional popularity must be at place… distrowatch probably is more prevalent is certain countries that MX is favored. I don’t see many in Asia using MX for instance, so western distrowatch distorts its global popularity. For instance if 3 users in the US use Mint and 3 MX but in China, that they barely go to distrowatch, 3 use Mint and 0 MX, distrowach would rank globally MX and Mint as same while in reality, Mint is clearly in top globally.

Of course, it is also likely MX developers have a bit of incentive of clicking on Distrowatch for their baby… I don’t find it particularly too bad since many developers are doing far worse things… Using bots and dozens of different IPs would trespass the ethical boundaries for me though! MX is not the only ones that could potentially be doing this… it is not possible that Arch or Kubuntu are raked way bellow Q4OS, Lite, or Bluestar for instance. I see some artifacts among top famed distros too. It reminds me of the VW diesel scandal… VW was cheeting, but all other car makers were manipulating in one way or another their emissions too, it is just that US found it convenient to go for the foreign low hanging fruit.

Best thing is for us to stop reading those rankings as anything more than distros that trend up and down and that is it. I categorize all distros we all hear about, from MX to Cachy, from Nobara to deepin all as equally competitive and the difference just catered to the needs of different users. The more unwarranted credit we give to these rankings, the more incentive we are given to manipulations.