July HUGE Sales drop!

MarkC · July 2012

yeah, twice, 24 days in total just getting those updates through. A little improvement, but not much. Time to move onto the next thing!!

rocotilos · July 2012

yup so my sales are down in july as well... not the normal trend for 5 weeks month.
off by a lot. thanks Chomp and Apple.

I'll go jump off a bridge now.

ok jk.. i can still live, but the drop hurts my feeling. i is unhappy developing for apple now.
i cancel new apps for now for apple and go android or windoze. my feeling is hurt. i is sad.

vbovio · July 2012

I have not seen such a huge drop, but sales fluctuate more often lately, I have seen some decrease as well.
This is why you should not put all your eggs in one basket, I have always put an eye in porting and seeing all this just makes me think I should better hurry and spend more time on porting..
Hope Apple listen to Indie devs.

iekei · July 2012

I've noticed that when Apple cares, it tends to care about the customers, at least officially.

rocotilos · July 2012

yea care abt customers, that's why clone apps and crapps are at the top ranking. so that customers would buy them. lol

foany · July 2012

MarkC said:
Yes, the search-term-app-name match thing still works in non-USA countries. Problem is, 80% of our sales are IN the USA :D

I watched this as it was unfolding, non-US stores didn't seem to be affected at all. But to me it seemed like they introduced a bug into the US store where titles were not included as keywords. They changed that back shortly after it was introduced (days), which made me believe it was a bug and so from then on we'd be back to normal. During this time people on this forum were talking about submitting updates to put their title into their keywords to get back their higher search result position.. it was around this time that review times went from the usual 1 week to 2 weeks. After the fix they probably changed the keywords back again, once more extending the review time.

SOME who relied on the US app store may well see a drop from that point onwards, but is that because there is still an issue in the US store or because the issue had such a negative effect on their downloads/chart position that they haven't been able to recover back to where they were?

If this was an intended change why just the US store? They've had long enough now to roll it out to the others?

I believe, and I hope, it was a bug they introduced into the US store that they have now put right. The devs that suffered then and suffer now were very unlucky. Is there a problem now with the search in the US store? It may still be a bug, it should be reported.

RoryHarvey · July 2012

foany said:

MarkC said:
Yes, the search-term-app-name match thing still works in non-USA countries. Problem is, 80% of our sales are IN the USA :D
I watched this as it was unfolding, non-US stores didn't seem to be affected at all. But to me it seemed like they introduced a bug into the US store where titles were not included as keywords. They changed that back shortly after it was introduced (days), which made me believe it was a bug and so from then on we'd be back to normal. During this time people on this forum were talking about submitting updates to put their title into their keywords to get back their higher search result position.. it was around this time that review times went from the usual 1 week to 2 weeks. After the fix they probably changed the keywords back again, once more extending the review time.

SOME who relied on the US app store may well see a drop from that point onwards, but is that because there is still an issue in the US store or because the issue had such a negative effect on their downloads/chart position that they haven't been able to recover back to where they were?

If this was an intended change why just the US store? They've had long enough now to roll it out to the others?

I believe, and I hope, it was a bug they introduced into the US store that they have now put right. The devs that suffered then and suffer now were very unlucky. Is there a problem now with the search in the US store? It may still be a bug, it should be reported.

It's absolutely not back to how it was before the "search update".

MarkC · July 2012

I submitted a bug report, to no avail...

foany · July 2012

MarkC said:
I submitted a bug report, to no avail...

Is there a clear difference in how search works in the US versus another english language store? Does a particular search term return an app in the results in the non-US but not the US? Or is it just that the positions vary, which could be down to the number of downloads and/or rankings difference between the stores?

I believe everyone that says sales volumes are down for them, but is this due to a current difference or due to prolonged absence from the rankings when the US store was in its temporary state? Because it did change again, search results included apps that were erroneously missing before, after the second change.

rocotilos · July 2012

Damage is done and irreversible, nuff said.

vince_plus_plus · July 2012

It didn't revert back to where it was before Jun 23rd

Result listing is sorted mostly by no. of downloads with no relevance on exact name match and little weight on higher prices. The affected apps are mostly paid apps which are found via search, their search ranks are lowered significantly. The general effect is as follows:

1) Many irrelevant apps get in the way
2) Exact name match has no effect, leaving new apps harder to be found and also diminishing word-of-mouth effect
3) Heavy apps with higher prices got no or little position boost, encouraging us to build cheap apps with less functionality? (I suspect that the position boost for expensive apps tends to fall off very quickly after 3.99)

Read also the search update thread for the evidence of the above effect

I believe the change lowers the search quality and this is bad for the users. If it's meant to be like this, I will accept it and learn to move on. After all, it is a long survival game

MarkC · July 2012

foany said:

MarkC said:
I submitted a bug report, to no avail...
Is there a clear difference in how search works in the US versus another english language store? Does a particular search term return an app in the results in the non-US but not the US? Or is it just that the positions vary, which could be down to the number of downloads and/or rankings difference between the stores?

I believe everyone that says sales volumes are down for them, but is this due to a current difference or due to prolonged absence from the rankings when the US store was in its temporary state? Because it did change again, search results included apps that were erroneously missing before, after the second change.

UK and Australia, at the very least - their search term ranking placings have remained completely unaffected. Won't be long until it rolls out I'd have thought. Or maybe (in my wildest dreams) they're comparing and contrasting to see which is working best - and then they'll roll back the USA change WOOOOOHOOOOO (I stand more chance of winning the EuroMillions lottery).

MarkC · July 2012

Thought I'd throw what little caution there is left to the wind and make a couple of apps free. Before, they were at least IN the search results. Now, they're completely NOWHERE.

You know what, Apple really have no clue as to what it's like to try and live as an independent developer. It's okay for them with their billions in the bank, but ask them a question as to how to help get back the relatively tiny amount of $$$ a day that their tinkering has cost me, and they can't even be arsed replying.

Fuck it, I'm off to retrain as an electrician! lol

kmk · July 2012

My sales are down 35-50% compared to the same period the past 4 years. I've decided it's time to get a normal job and just work on my apps on the weekends.

Arty Tales · July 2012

MarkC said:

You know what, Apple really have no clue as to what it's like to try and live as an independent developer. It's okay for them with their billions in the bank, but ask them a question as to how to help get back the relatively tiny amount of $$$ a day that their tinkering has cost me, and they can't even be arsed replying.

It's a very valid point. The least we could expect a bit more communication. I also don't think the bigger players like Apple's uncertainty, although they no doubt have better communication channels.

taylor202 · July 2012

I got featured in Australia and the UK and went from making 50-75 bucks a day on the app to 600+ Just hang in there. I have noticed that starting around Oct sales really jump back up.

rocotilos · August 2012

Getting featured is like hitting the lottery. That is not relevant to this discussion, Taylor.

I guess Apple now feels indie devs as less important now as they have reeled in big names over to their platform. And the fact they have 600k apps and be able to boast about it.
So lets experiment shit on puny indie devs, they cant do anything about it. Hardy har har

ilmman · August 2012

It's time to unionize boys and girls...

MarkC · August 2012

The thought had crossed my mind :O

kkkkkkkk · August 2012

I just don't understand why apple messed up with the search engine in such a way, in reality this benefits nobody, do you think that anyone is going to download angry birds or jet-pack joy ride because it popped out first on an irrelevant key-word search?? Iphone users are surrounded by these same old apps that pop in every category, every top list everywhere. They are AWARE OF THEM ALREADY!! .If the user is searching for something, just give him what he is searching for and stop trying to force feed him the same things. it seems like apple missed the whole point here. Part of the gaming industry is moving on forward and embracing new stuff... that is why it is called "a game" and not "a commitment" . pushing down indie developers in such a way just so the big cats can have it more easily is damaging your platform in the long-run and maybe that is what is killing the game consoles as well right now. Spending huge money in marketing campaigns will increase your sales in the short run but people will slowly fade away once they got tired from Call of duty-18 or Pes-194. If you make it seem like "all that it is outhere" is these 10-20 titles and crash the competition no matter how hard you force feed them, people will get bored and fade away ... that it's the cycle of this industry. mess with it and you mess with greater forces.

J · August 2012

Can't agree more with vince_plus_plus !
If you're planning to work months on a big app and sell it for 2.99+, be ready to rage past the first few days after release, you will see your app just fall into the abyss of appStore. (without $k adverstising)
I see a lot of duplicates/clones/spams apps in good rank, with a lot of bad reviews... When some of us work months on one single app without a chance to get noticed...
My last app launch is a disaster and it has nothing to do with the app itself, I have some really good feedbacks from Android and IOS users.
I'm disappointed...

mer10 · August 2012

J said:
Can't agree more with vince_plus_plus !
If you're planning to work months on a big app and sell it for 2.99+, be ready to rage past the first few days after release, you will see your app just fall into the abyss of appStore. (without $k adverstising)
I see a lot of duplicates/clones/spams apps in good rank, with a lot of bad reviews... When some of us work months on one single app without a chance to get noticed...
My last app launch is a disaster and it has nothing to do with the app itself, I have some really good feedbacks from Android and IOS users.
I'm disappointed...

Same here. Decided to price at $1.99 as I felt the content justified it but now I'm buried in the junk for my category and the ranking algorithm has only hurt me from the first day.

peterwilli · August 2012

If the search engine is really changed this way (my sales dropped as well) i'm in for a class action lawsuit

Newbie123 · August 2012

peterwilli said:
If the search engine is really changed this way (my sales dropped as well) i'm in for a class action lawsuit

You must be new here. We had a huge discussion about the search update. A lot of our sales dropped.

Good luck in your lawsuit.

peterwilli · August 2012

Newbie123 said:

peterwilli said:
If the search engine is really changed this way (my sales dropped as well) i'm in for a class action lawsuit
You must be new here. We had a huge discussion about the search update. A lot of our sales dropped.

Good luck in your lawsuit.

Yeah I have read it (all 3 pages) I'm just really pissed of if this is a change from Apple that didn't have to happen.

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July HUGE Sales drop!

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