Latest AppStore Cheat
So I did a search on the AppStore for Rolando to see what the buzz is all about. As part of that search I noticed some totally unrelated apps (which I won’t name them here). Looking at the description of that unrelated app I noticed the following bit of content:
Currently Playing: koi pond, cube, animal farm, hockey, metro, photo bag, filed runners, cro-mag rally, tap tap, rolando, google, texas hold-em, adventure, ocarina, poker, kids, ibear, spore, monkey ball, crash bandicoot, pinball, trism, turkey hunt, oz weather, remote, brain tuner.
Well that’s quite an odd bit of data to stick in to your own app description. I searched around for other high profile apps and found quite a few developers have chosen to SEO optimize their app description. So first we have apps naming themselves with blanks at the beginning to take advantage of alphabetical listing in the store. Then we have apps going from Free to Paid to take advantage of the top 100 list. And now this SEO hack, what’s next? Try the search out for yourself:
iTunes App Store search results for Ocarina
See a few apps that don’t seem to belong? Check out their descriptions.
They’ve been doing this since day 1. Check out how many apps mention Bejeweled in their description. Although to be fair, most of the ones I’ve seen doing that are Bejeweled-like.
Part of the problem is the limited ways that Apple lets you search the app store.
Thanks for calling attention to this. It’s despicable and worthy of a full-on store ban.
Certain apps – I won’t mention any names, like, oh, iCanSketchIt – hide their bait behind this sort of BS:
“Customers who purchased this game also liked…”
This is even worse than sleazy; to the average user with Amazon experience, it looks like an App Store recommendation feature.
disgusting.. i’ll be reporting every instance of this i see.
A question — are there rules that specifically ban this sort of activity? In other words, are they violating their agreement with Apple or merely being unethical?
To be fair, the App Store is still an infant.
Apple has pulled of an exceptional v1.0 for the App Store, but things like this are completely natural and will be ironed out over time. By natural, I mean there are naturally lots of developers that will do anything they can to increase sales, and once one person starts doing something that may be frowned upon by others, people will do it too because it makes sense to increase sales. Of course the blatant listing of every popular game in the Store is obscene, but to mention a game or two that is similar to yours is fair in my book.
With that said, I don’t think anyone should be banned from the store if they do this, because there is no rule against it in place. Apple has the power to change their policies and I’m sure they are constantly working on keeping the store a fair marketplace. Change the policy in reaction to such practices and then start slapping wrists (or ban) if they break the new policy.
Awwwww Snap! :\
Dodgy.
Writing SEO optimize doesn’t really work, since thats the same thing as writing Search engine optimization optimized. You might want to revise that.
That’s evil. Those developers should be warned and, if they don’t remove them, banned.
wow. that’s just scummy, if there’s such a word
in the AppStore app (ie viewed on the iPhone) you can click on the “Report a Problem” button at the bottom of the listing. maybe everyone can report this kind of behavior to Apple? and of course just boycott apps from this kind of developer
Of course, Smule is taking advantage of this to a certain extent tooâ mentioning their popular app in the description of less popular offerings to generate traffic. If banned, should the line be drawn at developers piggybacking or apps themselves? What about cross-promotion between developers? Some blatantly unethical behavior is going on, but couldn’t this be used responsibly to help app visibility?
I think it’s one thing to go from free to paid to take advantage of the top 100, if you’re going to complain about that, then app developers who drop their price to $.99 are just as bad (I don’t have an issue with either), but peppering your description in this way is a little frustrating. The question is, what about developers who post something like: Does everything that xxx does, plus more. Is that reasonable (we have that do that)? competitors
Sorry for this off-topic comment, but please don’t advertise your holiday special price as “.99 cents.” Are you really selling Weightbot for less than a penny?
Don’t commit the Verizon Math fallacy!
Thanks Andy. It’s been fixed.
Google figured out a long time ago how to slap down pages that were stuffed with irrelevant keywords.
I would put more blame on Apple for making an App Store search index that doesn’t filter out such irrelevancy.
Maggots. Apple was never like this. Mac users were straight, no cheap shots. But now we’re tainted by Windows users.
These developers don’t deserve to even install the iPhone SDK.
To Dan Bedford: I totally agree App Store is exceptional. But it still does not warrant the bastardisation of the Store by these worms. In other words, it’s nothing to do with Apple â they did fine â it’s these rogue developers that need fixing.
There’s a certain culture of the Mac, a certain way things are phrased or done. There’s a certain breed of people fit to use, or develop for, the Mac. Apple should have a tighter screening for the developers they allow in.
If you write a Tetris clone, shouldn’t you be allowed to mention Tetris in the description and therefore market yourself to people looking for Tetris? What’s wrong with that?
I think this applies to any game-alike.
lol
cheap.
@Eric
Mentioning “tetris” if you’re selling a tetris-like game is fine in my book. But many of these developers are re-creating the “Customers also bought…” list that Apple has already provided, and they’re adding the names of popular apps.
One developer’s app lists only 6 apps that customers also bought, but the developer has listed 31 unrelated app names in the description text. That’s just wrong.
Wow! Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed. Why not rag on big companies like Gameloft for including keywords that pick up their competitors, or look to the web and most large co’s eg: Salesforce for including metatags that pick up their competitors.
Interesting that Erica mentions many high profile apps yet singles out one small independent (who by all accounts have made an excellent, original and well received game ) for recommending other apps they consider to be of good quality?
Seriously the narrow focus and heavy-handedness of this article doesn’t help anyone -least of all developers are all struggling to be seen in a very crowded store, where keyword searches are commonplace.
Last time I checked Erica’s opinion was just that, not a decree from on high. With zero helpful suggestions for improvement offered.
Next.
Oops that should be Eric without the a.
My bad.
There’s quite a difference between mentioning a competitor or two in the description as a comparison (i.e. we’re cheaper then XYZ or better then ABC) and poisoning the search index.
The developer, that Erica mentioned in her article, is doing nothing more then spamming the Apple Store. He is listing a number of top 50 apps that have absolutely nothing to do with his card game.
It’s at best morally questionable.
I made this same comment on a blog post by Erica Sadun. My example will give you an easy way to see how prevalent this practice is :
I’m not quite sure where I stand on this issue. But here’s a quick example:
Do a search for “enigmo” on Appbeacon :
http://appbeacon.com/search.php?query=enigmo&search=1
You get a whole lot of results for other apps. So, in some cases, you could assume that people trying to find Enigmo might get diverted to another app and possibly never buy Enigmo.
However, it’s also possible that the users might see Enigmo mentioned in a competing app’s description and go investigate and eventually buy Enigmo.
So, it’s a double edged sword. I suspect the advantage might be to the competing app, but I don’t have any real facts to back that suspicion up.
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