Another round of search updates?

Silus · August 2012

I took a look at one of my keywords I use to track some of my apps this afternoon. It has been dead steady since the last search update with absolutely no change in positioning and very minor changes among some other apps that come up with the keyword.

This afternoon, the results are extremely jumbled and very different from how they have been. Is anyone else noticing this? Are we in for another round of search roulette?

AragornSG · August 2012

Looks like it. Dragon Lords took another nosedive.

Silus · August 2012

Great... dropped from #1 for this keyword (less populated keyword) to #5 last time which was bad but still "visible" in the initial results without scrolling... Now dropped again to #8 with the free version that was lower appearing right above now. Even worse, many I see above are not popular at all. And to top it all off, almost ALL of my competition which was on the market much later than me shot up above my app. *sigh* Hate to see if this was a more crowded keyword.

Interesting enough, the paid version of this app shows up 1st on the dropdown when entering the keyword (since the last time they messed up search) so I don't think there's any relation between that dropdown and actual results any more. It used to match up prior to the last update.

PixelEnvision · August 2012

I've also noticed that... Plus, there is a big difference when searching on device vs Mac application for some search terms. One app ranked 10 on Mac iTunes vs ranked 46 on iPad iTunes for the same search.

iekei · August 2012

What store are you talking about, Silus?

I just checked all of my apps on the US store, and they all rank number one for searches of their app names. That's the way it should be.

Kryckter · August 2012

It seems the latest search update favors free apps. Alot of my apps have dropped below free competitors when they used to be above.

Plus random searches seem to have only free apps on the top 5 results normally...

FDApps · August 2012

Yup, something for sure happened yesterday. Results are worse and sales were also down....

chemistry · August 2012

has anyone actually benefit from these changes? I mean how can it be worse for everyone, everytime?

vince_plus_plus · August 2012

Have seen similar results. I mean even paid apps without downloads rank and grossing rank come right over mine which has both download ranks and grossing ranks. I really have no clue. But that at least proves the potential customers of my app's kind will not buy apps because of their ranks in the search results

And actually, having done some experiments, free downloads do account for search rank when the app turns paid back again. I have seen an app made me mistakenly thought the free downloads didn't account, but actually it did only after a week or so. Mine had almost immediate effect, not sure if there might be some follow up effect after a week or so. Also, turning free is also good because only after then I discovered new markets which usually wouldn't appear in the sales reports. Some good reviews and ratings are better than nothing, the power of free will buy us some if the quality of the app is good

Silus · August 2012

iekei said:
What store are you talking about, Silus?

I just checked all of my apps on the US store, and they all rank number one for searches of their app names. That's the way it should be.

I was looking on US store on my phone (haven't checked others since US has the biggest impact). I wasn't using full app name for search though. If app name puts you back on top maybe they re-added weighting full app name then.

Silus · August 2012

vince_plus_plus said:
Have seen similar results. I mean even paid apps without downloads rank and grossing rank come right over mine which has both download ranks and grossing ranks. I really have no clue. But that at least proves the potential customers of my app's kind will not buy apps because of their ranks in the search results

The full effect might not have trickled down yet either since the change just happened. My sales actually ended up slightly higher yesterday somehow but I'm not sure how truthfully.

I'm just glad I optimized my ads to where they are actually starting to improve on revenue in the free version with those rising to the top now...

Arty Tales · August 2012

It has definitely pushed the free apps even higher. I am not complaining.

Silus · August 2012

Well all that will do in the end if they keep pushing free apps up more is push more new apps to freemium model. It seems a good portion of vocal users are starting to get annoyed that model already though (probably because they don't see the reason why so many go freemium instead of just paid).

PlutoPrime · August 2012

The new changes have been great.

I think due to the stores maturity, these changes tend to really shuffle and hurt people with apps that have very few life-time or daily downloads, but if you have an app with thousands and thousands of downloads, great rating, great keywords, and good ranking, then it naturally shows up in a good search spot.

I think for those of you who keep blaming Apple, do realize that Apple has "knobs" to tweak and so do you. Make sure you've done everything optimally on your end. (And just because you think you've done everything right, doesn't mean you have)

I think the days of hoping to earn $2000 monthly earnings stably are gone. You should either be trying to dominate your market and earn buckets of money, or expect to get tossed around.

Silus · August 2012

I'm actually talking about rock solid stable apps with thousands and thousands of downloads (top end in this niche), 5 star lifetime rating, keywords that always worked great. These are more of a niche so ranking has slid since all the copy cat apps dilluted things but still stable apps that are repeatedly reviewed as the best out of the options available.

smashing · August 2012

My sales have actually improved due to the latest search update. Unfortunatly they have only improved to my June numbers before the first search "improvement". But I do see that Free apps rank higher than mine on direct app title searches. Oh well, at least Apple is improving things, even if they did break some of those very things only a month ago.

MarkC · August 2012

FFS it's ridiculous. A couple of my apps have improved that had nosedived in the previous round of 'dicking around' in June, others a reverse effect. Whatever they're doing, they're certainly pissing a few long-time devs RIGHT off.

Apple have made a good six figure sum off me with their 30% cut - and mine is small-fry compared with some others - but they really should tell developers what they're doing before they go ahead and do it when it affects livelihoods.

MarkC · August 2012

And yesterdays figures were just a joke, worst for 3 years. Have to laugh really, otherwise I'd be topping myself right now.

mastersdom · August 2012

My app has 500,000+ paid downloads. Small fry to some but a big deal to me. It has dropped 4 places from No2 and the sales have more than halved with the new search update so ... I'm just going to fill the paid version with ads and if that makes money I'll make it free with a "remove ads" option.

PS My sales were the worst for 3 years too.

J · August 2012

I can't complain about this new update, my sales did not change anyway.
I can notice the actual app name has more impact in the search which make sense when people type the exact name.

StayFoolish · August 2012

I have an app launched recently, I was picking up 5-10 downloads daily, now I'm down to 0 or 1 a day... Great way to encourage new devs Apple!

Trybius · August 2012

All my sales have stayed static, or swung up over the past few days.

dhomes · August 2012

dont understand what happened during the past three days (Fri through Sun). My main app sells about 6 to 10 (it's a niche app for civil / structural engineers that costs $4.99. For the past three days it has sold just ONE daily. YET, it's showing first on iphone / ipod touch when looking for it's name (a common english word) also first when looking for the search term engineers use for what the app does. On the mac it's showing 4th for its name & still first when looking for the search combination. So it's gone up on the rankings for the name, no change for the search combination and now I'm down in sales!

Also, and unrelated, has anyone started to get their itunesconnect sales report for the month of July?

strange stuff overall going with apple.

Yoonoo · August 2012

Looks like search rankings vary widely between the device and iTunes, got an App that's ranked #20 for a search term in iTunes but is ranked around #57 for the same search term on the device. It's been like this for the last four days.

MarkC · August 2012

For a company of Apples stature, it's fookin' pathetic TBH. They reject apps for all kinds of reasons; well, at least THEY WORK and aren't tested for the first time in a live environment.

Arty Tales · August 2012

dhomes said:
dont understand what happened during the past three days (Fri through Sun). My main app sells about 6 to 10 (it's a niche app for civil / structural engineers that costs $4.99. For the past three days it has sold just ONE daily. YET, it's showing first on iphone / ipod touch when looking for it's name (a common english word) also first when looking for the search term engineers use for what the app does. On the mac it's showing 4th for its name & still first when looking for the search combination. So it's gone up on the rankings for the name, no change for the search combination and now I'm down in sales!

I would say that is just random. If you are selling an average of less than 10 a day, I don't think it is that unlikely to have a few days of selling just one without there being any underlying factor. The other apps showing up with similar keyword searches are probably getting the same and therefore no change is observed in the ranks.

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Another round of search updates?

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