I wonder if they take in to account what apps people have chosen to hide in their purchase list? I know I mostly hide junky ones.

Where's that "draconian store policies" troll when you need him? 

Long overdue.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton 

Where's that "draconian store policies" troll when you need him? 

whats this have to do with that at all?  This has nothing to do with store policies.

But.... having most downloaded apps show up first isn't always a good thing to do.  It means people will see the most famous apps first, so it will be hard for newer and maybe better apps to ever compete with well established apps.  That said, the older search method wasn't any better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 


I wish there was a way to permanently get rid of apps after I've hid them. They can leave me connected to it on their back end so that if I do actually try to download some junk app I've paid for in the past or it's now a paid for app it still lets me, but I actually purchase less apps than i would because I dislike the clutter so much. I'm not a hoarder.

Yes, I am overly careful about purchases too. There are lots of free apps that it wouldn't hurt to try, but I don't want them in my purchase list forever and a day.

Well, in the case of one of my company's apps, Wine Navigator Plus, the algorithm change has made our ranking terrible.

We've consistently been about #11 when searching for "wine" (on the UK store at least). We're now ranked #90.

We've had loads of downloads over the time it's been available and the app is currently enjoying a 4.5 star rating (again, in the UK).

The thing that bothers me is that apps appearing higher than us include those with very little to do with wine at all (iBeer and Classic Books for instance!)

The first result that appears (and this hasn't changed) is one called Wine* which has no ratings, looks tacky as hell and I'd argue is of very little use to wine drinkers. That app is also very new so, in terms of downloads, we'd surely have had far more (especially given that our app was free for a day recently, getting us an extra 7,000 users).

So, however Apple have changed the algorithm, I don't believe it's based on number of downloads. And it's certainly not improved the relevance for users - at least in this case.

Is this a good change? It sounds like poor quality free apps will rank a lot higher than fantastic, innovative but expensive apps.

This is frustrating. This just makes it harder for the developer to get traction in the app store. I recently launched the iPad note taking app called Note Binder. Upon first release I put a couple keywords in the name so it would show up on more search results. The name was " Note Binder PDFAnnotation, text, record audio, record video, handwrite Dropbox backup". This worked well until we released our first update and Apple then rejected the update on account of the name. Stating that the name didn't match the name displayed on the app because there were other "keywords" included in it. So we had to re-submit as just "Note Binder". Now , even though we have a list of keywords associated with Note Binder in the metadata, it doesnt show up in search results for ANY of the keywords....It doesn't even show up when a search for "Note" is done and that is part of the app name!!! As a result, our average daily downloads have dropped dramatically. Apple touts itself about being for the developers......this is a kick in the pants. I have emailed Apple to try to get some answers, it will be interesting to find out what they have to say.