Search update

IconicDigital · June 2012

I would think that these changes may have an effect on the number of apps being submitted for updates. Does anyone know if having a word in your title and then having the same word in your keywords will have a negative effect on your rankings?

For example

Title = Video Editor

Keywords = video,editor,effects

Thanks

RoryHarvey · June 2012

michaelm;439478 said:
I think it is a good idea to put your app name in your keywords now to prevent the "Instagram camera" issue.

How will this help if it performs the search on title name anyway? Surely the only way to avoid the "Instagram camera" issue would be to remove "camera" from the keywords?

vince_plus_plus · June 2012

Please submit your bug report and write to Tim Cook

I have struggled about the sales plummet for a few days but I asked myself if that's all I need to give up. We came across issues before and ever will. In my country, there had been businesses about helping people to get their visas to Taiwan, but once a policy was out and visas weren't needed those businesses had to be shut down and the owners needed to move on for other businesses. Life is like that

However, it's still not time to jump ship to Android, the revenue will only be about one fifth. Also, if you do some searches about productivity apps, you get the scenes of full of free apps sitting at the top. Unless you go freemium and can stand the fragmentation as well as the compatibility issues, Android just isn't viable and you are already late to the party. WP7 is also even more pathetic (also I found no value upon the recent Surface, complete fail... don't know about WP8 but it seems Microsoft doesn't know how to do business and will always fail the first time they enter any new business)

We can't go silent as always, someone has to stand up, please

mastersdom · June 2012

vince_plus_plus;439602 said:
Please submit your bug report and write to Tim Cook

I have struggled about the sales plummet for a few days but I asked myself if that's all I need to give up. We came across issues before and ever will. In my country, there had been businesses about helping people to get their visas to Taiwan, but once a policy was out and visas weren't needed those businesses had to be shut down and the owners needed to move on for other businesses. Life is like that

However, it's still not time to jump ship to Android, the revenue will only be about one fifth. Also, if you do some searches about productivity apps, you get the scenes of full of free apps sitting at the top. Unless you go freemium and can stand the fragmentation as well as the compatibility issues, Android just isn't viable and you are already late to the party. WP7 is also even more pathetic (also I found no value upon the recent Surface, complete fail... don't know about WP8 but it seems Microsoft doesn't know how to do business and will always fail the first time they enter any new business)

We can't go silent as always, someone has to stand up, please

And you know what? You're right. I'd rather pull my own teeth out than move to Android and Windows Phone. It would be a last resort. I know I have a couple of great apps, and some also rans too ;) The great apps should do well unless the results are rigged and/or crap. I'm going to give it time to settle.

mastersdom · June 2012

Has the search algorithm changed slightly today? Just a rumour I heard and possibly not true at all.

vince_plus_plus · June 2012

It seems it's a little bit different. Some irrelevant apps go away, but there are repeating apps in different pages (maybe the cache still hasn't fully propagated)

Is it just me? One page only contains 24 apps instead 25?

AragornSG · June 2012

Apple does not play dice with the developers; They play an ineffable game of their own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

MarkC · June 2012

^^^^

THIS

Monstertaco · June 2012

AragornSG;439609 said:
Apple does not play dice with the developers; They play an ineffable game of their own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

How are you holding up Aragorn? I just took a look at Dragon Lords rating and it has taken a nose dive in ranking since the 21st.

AragornSG · June 2012

Monstertaco;439640 said:
How are you holding up Aragorn? I just took a look at Dragon Lords rating and it has taken a nose dive in ranking since the 21st.

P***ed off as you can imagine.
Majority of the players coming to Dragon Lords were from the search for "dragon" where the game popped up at 3rd place. Now it's not in the top 25. :mad:

I'm trying to remain positive though. I have an update coming out soon, with the iPad version (finally!), the loading freeze bug fixed (finally!) and Facebook integration fixed (finally!), so I'll use that opportunity to add "dragon" the keywords and see how it affects the rankings. Big thanks to Clarky for helping me out with it! :)

I also have a second game (Dragon Lords cloned into sci-fi) coming out in a month or so. I'm not despairing. Life is good. :cool:

PlutoPrime · June 2012

mastersdom;439604 said:
Has the search algorithm changed slightly today? Just a rumour I heard and possibly not true at all.

It's not a rumor. As the guy who originally reported this update, I can confirm that search was tweaked again today.

ukneeq · June 2012

I'm not sure if my app is just so small time that it isn't effected much but this but my sales have actually increased a little. Also tried a search with my title and keyword and it still showed up in the search results.

PlutoPrime · June 2012

Today's change I believe increased the weight for older apps. Apple seems to be copying the fully functioning Android Search system.

MarkC · June 2012

And now I've gone from #1 to #85. Well, thanks a whole fr1ggin bunch, Apple.

Numb.

Zhenya · June 2012

I've gone from #36 yesterday to #17 today. And I can't see that much irrelevant applications above me anymore. Looks like they are still working on the algorithm. Did anyone else experience having their ratings back? Wish you all luck!

LEARN2MAKE · June 2012

Zhenya;439678 said:
I've gone from #36 yesterday to #17 today. And I can't see that much irrelevant applications above me anymore. Looks like they are still working on the algorithm. Did anyone else experience having their ratings back? Wish you all luck!

Are you talking search or category rankings? I've noticed some real improvements in our search placement. Our sales have been slightly up since they changed things. I feel bad for people that have seen some real loses, that sucks!

MarkC are you talking #1 for searches or #1 in a category dropping to #85?

MarkC · June 2012

Searches...

Currently contemplating updating all my apps with iAP as I have a userbase of 500k to leverage.

I did mention a while back when the Chomp announcement came out that something like this could happen. It's just the deafening silence from Apple that pisses me right off. Don't worry Apple, I've only made you a very healthy six figure sum over the years, don't worry about letting me know you we're about to drop this on us, lovely way to treat us.

Zhenya · June 2012

LEARN2MAKE;439680 said:
Are you talking search or category rankings? I've noticed some real improvements in our search placement. Our sales have been slightly up since they changed things. I feel bad for people that have seen some real loses, that sucks!

My stats are for Search only for a free app with an in-app purchase. I'm not anywhere close to the top #100 in the category.

LEARN2MAKE · June 2012

MarkC;439681 said:
Searches...

Currently contemplating updating all my apps with iAP as I have a userbase of 500k to leverage.

I did mention a while back when the Chomp announcement came out that something like this could happen. It's just the deafening silence from Apple that pisses me right off. Don't worry Apple, I've only made you a very healthy six figure sum over the years, don't worry about letting me know you we're about to drop this on us, lovely way to treat us.

I think that going freemium is a great idea if things will stay the same with searches. Our free with IAP apps are the ones getting boosts in the search results, while the paid versions have dropped a bit in search results. We always upsale the paid version in the free version too, give the user the option to buy IAPs or just get the full version.

On your userbase, do you have email addresses etc or would you just promote in-app through updates? If you have email addresses I think you could really make some noise!

RoryHarvey · June 2012

Okay, I'm still confused as to how to set up the keywords so my app actually gets returned in searches...

Currently a search for the exact app name "Mobile Monsters" in the US app store doesn't even return it in the top 100 (Instead it returns, Temple Run & Cut the Rope! WTF?) and this is with both "Mobile" and "Monsters" as keywords.

So what should I do? Remove Mobile and Monsters as keywords? That seems to go against what other people have suggested, but clearly something is wrong as the app is no longer returned by direct searches for it.

foany · June 2012

Could it be a bug?

Posters have mentioned it only occurs in the US app store? is anyone seeing this in a different store?

Presumably background changes are in motion in preperation for the new app store on ios6 ?

mastersdom · June 2012

RoryHarvey;439698 said:
Okay, I'm still confused as to how to set up the keywords so my app actually gets returned in searches...

Currently a search for the exact app name "Mobile Monsters" in the US app store doesn't even return it in the top 100 (Instead it returns, Temple Run & Cut the Rope! WTF?) and this is with both "Mobile" and "Monsters" as keywords.

So what should I do? Remove Mobile and Monsters as keywords? That seems to go against what other people have suggested, but clearly something is wrong as the app is no longer returned by direct searches for it.

Me too.

kmk · June 2012

My search results have improved considerably but my sales have not really been impacted. So far I'm down ~20% compared to last June.

revg · June 2012

mastersdom;439583 said:
I'm considering finishing off my existing projects then moving over to Android and Windows Phone. Will see how all of this settles first. Made over a million from other mobile OS's in the past so it's not that big a deal. The Apple ecosystem is too unreliable.

Android will not be any better. Trust me when I say that you will probably find it much much worse for many different reasons.

Apple AppStore > Android (Google Play) by a HUGE margin imo.

LEARN2MAKE · June 2012

RoryHarvey;439698 said:
Okay, I'm still confused as to how to set up the keywords so my app actually gets returned in searches...

Currently a search for the exact app name "Mobile Monsters" in the US app store doesn't even return it in the top 100 (Instead it returns, Temple Run & Cut the Rope! WTF?) and this is with both "Mobile" and "Monsters" as keywords.

So what should I do? Remove Mobile and Monsters as keywords? That seems to go against what other people have suggested, but clearly something is wrong as the app is no longer returned by direct searches for it.

If this is true it could really make it even more difficult to compete with the established apps. Its probably because Temple Run & Cut the Rope! have mobile and/or monster(s) as keywords and the new algorithm weighs popularity very heavily. App Titles used to have a lot of weight but it appears now that they don't really have any weight at all, or at least not any more than popular keywords.

That makes it very difficult to get any traction for commonly searched terms or even terms that are directly tied to your app. Do you have a freemium version of your app? That may help get some exposure but you would need to have significant downloads for it to rank better but it does seem free is ranking higher than paid in the new search rules.

Wow, this all gives me a headache. I understand why Apple did it with people figuring out how to rank high for popular searches with some pretty crap apps, but it seems that giving the popular apps even more exposure will only serve to create a larger gap between the haves and the have nots.

On a positive note, our free Dollar Origami app used to rank #2 for the search "Dollar Origami" and now it is #1. Only problem is the paid version was always 3 or 4 and now it dropped to #12. Also, for the search "Origami" our free Dollar Origami app used to rank around #25 and now it ranks #5 and it ranks #4 for "Paper Folding" where it used to not rank. This is great for that app, and it is nice to get some recognition for that app since it is so much better than a lot of the "scan an origami book and put it in a table view" origami apps that flood the store.

I'm involved with other apps and other companies that had apps ranking #1 and #2 for key searches that have now dropped out of the top #25 and even top #50 so I've seen both sides. I guess I'm just glad to have some diversity in the types of apps that we are involved with, and things have evened out overall. Income is pretty much the same as last week, but individual apps have had wild swings up or down.

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