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I'm sick of this. I'm so, so sick of this. I swear every time this happens, I think "oh, there is no app by that name" and then I have to double check make sure

I'm sick of this. I'm so, so sick of this. I swear every time this happens, I think "oh, there is no app by that name" and then I have to double check make sure I really used the right search term and that the result is actually a first party app. If I were searching for a genre such as "podcast" or "camera" app, I understand seeing paid ads. But when I search for a specific name, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever there should be an ad above my results. There has to be a better way.

californical 6y ago
Although this gets tricky -- will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" so that their app name is optimized to match a search term exactly? Maybe this already happens, but I can see it being hard to distinguish if the person is looking up a specific app called "podcast player" or a generic term
- leonidasv 6y ago
  You're assuming that just looking for the title is everything a search engine does when it's not. It's easy to create and train a model to distinguish between brands and generic words by counting how many times a single word appears over app descriptions, for example - there are countless ways to do this. This, in turn, can neutralize the effect of naming your app after a generic word when it comes to search ranking.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    How do you know it's not competitors putting the product in their descriptions enough times that it will count as generic so they can rank above? I mean you can solve that too I'm sure, but it starts becoming more complicated than sixothree originally suggested.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  > will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" This would be quite funny. I still see businesses called things like AAA automotive and similar which date back to optimising their telephone book listing order. Was this early SEO?
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    Yeah, there's a lot of motels from the 70s in my city that start with the letter A, but the Aalton Motel presumably won that arms race.
- duskwuff 6y ago
  Apple has control over that, though! They could easily reject applications with overly generic names if that were a concern.
  - asiachick 6y ago
    They already do don't they. Only Apple gets "Maps", "Mail", "Messages", etc...
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Someone could manually set some keywords too. But if there's too much uncertainty then just don't do ads at all. The fallback shouldn't be ads for all search terms. Your post seems like a rebuttal to the idea of "just show the app they wanted", but that wasn't the request. The request was just to leave the search alone.
thunderrabbit 6y ago
Especially when names are globally unique!
makecheck 6y ago
Among my feedback was a request to restore real search filters. If one can click an “exact app name” box or similar, the results should always be as intended. Of course I asked for more (like “no apps with more than $5 in-app purchases”).
- xnyan 6y ago
  That gives up control and they have no competitors in this market (iOS app stores), can’t see that happening without anti-trust.
conductr 6y ago
I think they're trying to get $appname to bid high to ensure they're listed first instead of a competitor. Google Ads does this too on the search engine. I often query and see $companyname advertising for their name even when they are a large brand that is dominating the #1 spot. Problem with App Store adds is, apps don't typically have the ad budget and probably don't lose out too much if they do have name recognition. It really boils down to poor UX.
glandium 6y ago
Like when you search Firefox and see an ad for Brave? (not hypothetical, seen it on the Play Store)

californical 6y ago

Although this gets tricky -- will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" so that their app name is optimized to match a search term exactly? Maybe this already happens, but I can see it being hard to distinguish if the person is looking up a specific app called "podcast player" or a generic term

leonidasv 6y ago
You're assuming that just looking for the title is everything a search engine does when it's not. It's easy to create and train a model to distinguish between brands and generic words by counting how many times a single word appears over app descriptions, for example - there are countless ways to do this. This, in turn, can neutralize the effect of naming your app after a generic word when it comes to search ranking.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  How do you know it's not competitors putting the product in their descriptions enough times that it will count as generic so they can rank above? I mean you can solve that too I'm sure, but it starts becoming more complicated than sixothree originally suggested.
lostlogin 6y ago
> will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" This would be quite funny. I still see businesses called things like AAA automotive and similar which date back to optimising their telephone book listing order. Was this early SEO?
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  Yeah, there's a lot of motels from the 70s in my city that start with the letter A, but the Aalton Motel presumably won that arms race.
duskwuff 6y ago
Apple has control over that, though! They could easily reject applications with overly generic names if that were a concern.
- asiachick 6y ago
  They already do don't they. Only Apple gets "Maps", "Mail", "Messages", etc...
Dylan16807 6y ago
Someone could manually set some keywords too. But if there's too much uncertainty then just don't do ads at all. The fallback shouldn't be ads for all search terms. Your post seems like a rebuttal to the idea of "just show the app they wanted", but that wasn't the request. The request was just to leave the search alone.

thunderrabbit 6y ago

Especially when names are globally unique!

makecheck 6y ago

Among my feedback was a request to restore real search filters. If one can click an “exact app name” box or similar, the results should always be as intended. Of course I asked for more (like “no apps with more than $5 in-app purchases”).

xnyan 6y ago
That gives up control and they have no competitors in this market (iOS app stores), can’t see that happening without anti-trust.

conductr 6y ago

I think they're trying to get $appname to bid high to ensure they're listed first instead of a competitor. Google Ads does this too on the search engine. I often query and see $companyname advertising for their name even when they are a large brand that is dominating the #1 spot. Problem with App Store adds is, apps don't typically have the ad budget and probably don't lose out too much if they do have name recognition. It really boils down to poor UX.

glandium 6y ago

Like when you search Firefox and see an ad for Brave? (not hypothetical, seen it on the Play Store)