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They do the same thing on the Play Store, for example I just searched for Firefox and the first result is a sponsored spot for Opera. Does Apple do that on the

They do the same thing on the Play Store, for example I just searched for Firefox and the first result is a sponsored spot for Opera. Does Apple do that on the App Store? A funnier example: searching for Amazon gives Temu as the first result. Searching for Temu gives Shein as the first result. Searching for Shein gives Shein as the first result! ...but only because they outbid everyone else for the ad spot on their own name, resulting in Double Shein: https://i.imgur.com/0buR8Hq.png https://i.imgur.com/0buR8Hq.png

RealStickman_ 1y ago
Testing this with Aurora Store and the search terms actually give me the correct results. Another reason to use that over Google Play Store
irrational 1y ago
I just searched "Firefox" in the app store. The top result is Google Chrome with an Ad indicator (Google paid for higher placement). Second is Firefox.
- homebrewer 1y ago
  Sometimes it's good to live in a region that no one cares about. I just searched for Firefox in the Android Play Store application, there were no ads, and the first result was Firefox. I also don't get any ads in American and UK podcasts for the same reason (except for those read by the host, but there are few of those and they're easy to ignore).
  - xp84 1y ago
    That's interesting. I wish it were more practical to use a dedicated VPN for some less-developed country just for my podcast client.
  - pitched 1y ago
    Podcasts are normally plain mp3 (or similar) files that get downloaded as-is off an rss feed, as far as I understand. I don’t think anyone gets extra ads outside the sponsored/host-read ones.
    - jsheard 1y ago
      The big podcast networks like iHeart are able to dynamically splice ads into episodes, so they can be targeted based on geoIP or whatever other signals they have on you.
      - pitched 1y ago
        I listen to a lot of Stuff You Should Know and haven’t noticed. TIL I’m exempt from their targeted ads too!
      - zbrozek 1y ago
        I want a self hosted proxy for podcasts that strips the ads and compresses the audio stream harder before my phone downloads it.
    - rchaud 1y ago
      Everyone posts to centralized RSS feeds these days. The company that owns the feed creates duplicates of the uploaded file, inserts ads into them, and serves a version of the file containing ads localized to the downloader's country. If the same podcast is uploaded to Youtube through the uploader's official channel, it won't contain those ads and you're better off downloading that.
  - smcin 1y ago
    Can you tell us which region are you in? (Iceland?) Does anyone publish a scorecard of search results vs Google region settings?
  - oefrha 1y ago
    On iOS App Store at least, my observation is they just show you a random irrelevant ad at the top if there’s no one specifically bidding for the term. Well that’s my assumption for why I get irrelevant <app with deep pocket> ads when I search for obscure terms. But maybe they don’t show an ad if there’s no bidder at all for garbage spots in <country>?
  - Gander5739 1y ago
    For me the first result was firefox, but it was a sponsored result, the second result was also firefox.
- balder1991 1y ago
  Same here.
- apprentice7 1y ago
  I did the same and my first result was NordVPN, lmao.
- thenthenthen 1y ago
  I mean Google payed Apple 20 Billion to be the default search engine…see: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/google-s-payments-to-apple-reached-20-billion-in-2022-cue-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/google-s-...
DarmokJalad1701 1y ago
Same thing happened to me. I wanted to get "Fit Notes" - a free and ad-free app. I searched for it and the first result is some adware/subscription-based crap. I skip over. I scroll down part the "Sponsored: Related to your search" section with a whole bunch of others. I am still seeing more paid/in-app-purchase/subscription-based apps. At this point I thought that the app didn't exist for newer versions of Android. It turned out that it was the second result, just above the "sponsored" one. It looked so much like a part of the first result that I just skipped over it.
- grey-area 1y ago
  In A/B tests the lack of clarity probably helped increase ad clicks. The metric they care about went up. It’s why ads in gmail look increasingly like normal messages.
evertedsphere 1y ago
This is also true on Apple's app stores, to be fair. I didn't know this until I got a MacBook Pro recently and my assumption that Apple's controls would be tighter than Google's was proven quite wrong when I opened the Mac App Store for the first rime.
- leakycap 1y ago
  The Mac App Store is such a wasteland. I don't know why Apple doesn't provide it a budget and some real human curation. The average person searching for Microsoft Word, which is on the App Store, gets screens of templates and junky overpriced apps.
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    For all of those app stores, the current approach prints them money and lets them claim impartiality, while still allowing some control through acceptance rules, ToSes and automated security measures. All those things scale well. Any other approach I can think of ends up having corner cases that involve human support or interfacing with regulatory systems - and these things do not scale well.
  - xp84 1y ago
    I don't know if curation is really the problem. Nearly every other platform has a search that when you search for "Mr Beast" on YouTube or "Elon Musk" on X they know you mean the popular one and not some 2-bit dork's fan page or parody that happens to have those words in the title/keywords. I think they just (A) have no idea what they're doing when it comes to search and (B) the scamware that fills all their App Stores makes Apple a ton of extra money compared to people finding the real apps which usually are monetized outside the app store due to Apple's absurd revshare.
    - leakycap 1y ago
      > I don't know if curation is really the problem. A lack of oversight is what I see as the problem, and the solution would require a significant human element. Expecting a retailer to know/inspect the product they collect margins on shouldn't be a big ask. The retailer has to know what they're selling, but Apple seems to turn a blind eye to shady listings because of the way Mac App Store results are shown and the lack of useful filtering available to the user.
latexr 1y ago
> Does Apple do that on the App Store? Yes they do. Their search already sucks in normal circumstances—I remember searching for “Pinboard” (the bookmarking service) and had to scroll by thirteen pinball (the game) apps before starting to see Pinboard apps—but you can type in the exact name of the app you want had have an ad for a competitor above it. Not only is it allowed, it’s encouraged.
- milch 1y ago
  They seem to have fixed that, at least for me all the top results are Pinboard clients or other products with Pinboard in the name. With the ads it really feels like Apple is playing all sides, they almost always show the competitor first. When you search the competitor it's a different competitor at the top. You can keep going until you terminate at some app that presumably pays top dollar to appear as an ad for themselves right above their app in the search results. The only thing I'm surprised by is that they even allow people to put ads over their own first party apps
  - frbr 1y ago
    The ad slot is purely a revenue tool, not a discovery aid. It forces developers to pay just to defend their own branded search terms. App Store Search ads are a hidden increase in commissions that you either accept to pay by bidding on your own app's name, or omit at the expense of having competitors show on top of you all the time, stealing your revenue. It creates a significant drain on resources for indies, to the point that it's often no longer worth it to bother creating apps. That's why Apple is now doing everything in their power to make app development easier, but that will more likely increase quantity and not necessarily quality, as it only deepens the ecosystem's problems by inviting more noise. The practical reality is, if you are not VC-backed and if you are not playing the heavy ad spend game, the App Store is more of a barrier than anything else.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  I just tried this, searched for "Pinboard" and it was the first app after one sponsored app (that was oddly completely unrelated). Tried a couple of other things, like "Instapaper" "Unread" and they were the first hits after a single sponsored app.
leakycap 1y ago
> Does Apple do that on the App Store? I believe so - and it seems the devs know it happens, bevause I often see a paid ad for "Chrome" if I search "Chrome"
NothingAboutAny 1y ago
Sometimes it's not even close, I went to download the PAX Australia app and the top result was Revolut. I'd love to know the set of circumstances that the algorithm picked them to sponsor there.
kumarm 1y ago
It is same on PlayStore and AppStore. You would be surprised to know Apple started this in AppStore before Google on PlayStore. I assume it is because Google wanted to be safe from Antitrust lawsuits (Follow Apple rather than going there first).
pinkmuffinere 1y ago
As a curiosity, this is a common strategy for advertising! But people still disagree whether it is the best investment. You can generally win on your own name with comparatively low bids, because it is obviously the most relevant search term, and relevance is often factored into the price you pay for ad placement. So you may choose to bid defensively, to stop competitors from advertising on your name. Even so, the obvious counter-argument is that the person searched for you _explicitly_ by name, so how likely are they to click on your competitor's ads? I don't have a ton of experience, so perhaps some orgs make the decision in a data-driven way, but I suspect most make the decision in a mostly faith-based way.
- Theodores 1y ago
  As I see it, it is like gambling. If you pay for keywords of a rival brand and you get conversions from it to make it worth your while then you can keep paying for those keywords. So yes, it is a data driven decision. However, it is also faith based. In e-commerce the guys buying the ads are not the brightest on the team. Same goes for their organic SEO counterparts. Their metrics rarely include the metric that matters to the board, namely profit. Their metrics are in sales at best, but most likely just clicks. I have never worked anywhere where it has been joined up. You wouldn't believe how much gets sold at a loss with customer acquisition costing more than the product. Imagine paying lots for the ad, some more for the hosting, some more for the affiliate marketing, then discounting the product and then free shipping, all with an outsourced warehouse that costs a fortune. In regular retail you just don't have this level of waste since there is a different cost structure and growth is unlikely to be double digit. Meanwhile, money is sucked out of the world and funnelled into ad tech. In the olden days adverts might support the local paper so the money stayed in the community.
  - pinkmuffinere 1y ago
    > If you pay for keywords of a rival brand… it is a data driven decision Right, I think this is easier to quantify. The hard case is advertising on _your own_ name, defensively (to stop others from doing so). I think it is hard to make a truly data driven decision in this case, since you don’t see the clicks you lose. I think you’d have to do a careful A/B test if you want to tease this apart. > the guys buying the ads are not the brightest on the team lol, surprise! I run marketing for a small business, I am the guy buying the ads haha. I’m not offended at all, but am a bit surprised the engineer-vs-sales feud is still alive. Fwiw I also do product design! Can’t we all get along?
bubblethink 1y ago
Same on maps as well. That has actual annoying consequences where you end up at the wrong place.
Marsymars 1y ago
I’ve stopped using either the play/app store to search for apps. I search kagi and then click-through to the appropriate app store.
gibspaulding 1y ago
Just opened the App Store to check. There’s an ad for chrome on the home screen. I click search and before I start typing search suggestions pop up. The first one is for chrome. I type Firefox and click search. The first result is chrome.
- milch 1y ago
  At least it's always only one ad, but on the other hand it takes up half the screen. Plus the title is the name of the app, not "Firefox". Really, the bar is not very high for ads
  - int_19h 1y ago
    The worst thing about it is that it looks exactly like a regular app listing, too. The only indication that it's an ad is a tiny "ad" icon - a pale blue square with slightly paler blue text. And that icon isn't even next to the (large and visible) app name, it's next to the (small and greyed out) tagline.
Cheetah26 1y ago
Learned that App Store does this too during a recent MFA rollout. What really surprised me was that when instructed to install Google Authenticator, a significant portion of people (I'd estimate close to 50%) would search the exact name and then proceed to reach to install the sponsored top result with a completely different name until I stopped them.
- alasdairking 1y ago
  Absolutely this. It is so disappointing that the big tech companies provide ANOTHER opportunity for less-skilled users to make a mistake. And a mistake that might hurt them with security and certainly cost and functionality. And in a core, security-sensitive function like "what third party apps should I have on my personal device?" This is not searching for fun memes on Reddit!
- frbr 1y ago
  And you can't even point someone to a specific app without the App Store trying hard to redirect their attention to an alternative.
- spogbiper 1y ago
  A lot of the MFA apps that Apple allows to appear above the official apps do work, but they have a $10/month subscription fee. The MS Authenticator clones have very similar icons and names
  - int_19h 1y ago
    I rather suspect that this kind of thing constitutes the majority of shovelware on all the app stores, rather than outright malware. The latter gets you quickly ejected, but if your app is technically within the rules, it's just a steady trickle of $$$ from people who install it by mistake or because they just don't know better.
thwarted 1y ago
I wonder how much this can end up contributing to the Kleenex-ification of a brand or a term. You search for firefox and random other browsers come up. Now browsers in general are associated with the firefox term. Of course, when it comes down to it, there isn't much difference between browsers anyway, the UI is different but they all need to work with the same websites, and people have been using specific application names in place of the type of data/work ("Excel file" being used to refer to a CSV).
- derefr 1y ago
  …you might have an argument there for this practice of rival-brand-mark sponsored-placement squatting constituting an odd type of trademark infringement. Imaging if PepsiCo paid grocers to shelve cans of Pepsi right beside cans of Coke, sharing the same inventory tag that just says “Coca Cola”. Coke would definitely be able to sue for something about that, right? Well, isn’t this the same?
  - notpushkin 1y ago
    > Imaging if PepsiCo paid grocers to shelve cans of Pepsi right beside cans of Coke I think that part is true? Inventory tag doesn’t matter too much here. Better analogy would be putting Pepsi syrup into a Coke-branded fountain, maybe?
  - frbr 1y ago
    Paying to parasitize the brand recognition and trust of a competitor has become the norm. he comparison to retail product squatting perfectly illustrates why this feels like an unfair infringement, not just aggressive marketing.
- notpushkin 1y ago
  > Now browsers in general are associated with the firefox term. Pardon? I’ve never heard a human call a browser “firefox” (as a generic term), or “chrome” for that matter (though people do assume you use Chrome by default now).
acomjean 1y ago
Try searching for chrome using ma edge. It basically intercepted said search and gave me an ad saying to keep using edge. Thinking back it seems unbeleivable so I searched. https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-windows-10-google-chrome-fight https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-wind...
is_true 1y ago
The Santander bank does the same when you enter the address of a broker while doing a transfer. They show an ad for one of their investment funds
porridgeraisin 1y ago
> Amazon Speaking of amazon... By god amazon search is horrid for this. If you search for HP laptop you get a whole bunch of sponsored Lenovo's at the top of the page.
- vkazanov 1y ago
  Searching for anything really on amazon is... an experience. 15 sponsored vs nothing of substance. And there is no way to know that a given, say, boardgame is not even available on Amazon. In fact, the results are so bad that most of the time I go through Google.
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    Every Amazon product page has a unique identifying number within the URL that can be used to relocate that exact product again if it is still online later. If you copy & save the whole URL it works as expected when you paste it into a browser next time, unless that page is gone for good. But if you just read the ID number to somebody and they type it into the search box, the product will appear as a tile surrounded by a few related product tiles and the rest unrelated. Completely outnumbered, and intentionally crafted to make it easier to buy some other product besides the exact one desired. And that's when you already know exactly what you want. Only if you then click on the correct one will it take you back to the exact same product page.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  I don't have access to any data that supports my vibes, but it just feels like any business that sells stuff has very little incentive to actually give you what you're searching for. I can't think of a single online store that's good at search and it seems like it's because the thought is "don't miss anything that might come close to the search terms". Whether it's Amazon, IKEA, the supermarkets where I live, etc, any search I make comes back with what looks like spray and pray SEO. Maybe it's actually a hard problem to solve, or maybe the goal is "sell anything!" (including better placement the seller pays for) rather than "give the user what they want".
bboygravity 1y ago
Apple is even worse. Try searching for Grok in the app store and it will be almost impossible to find due to some deal they have with OpenAI.
- nwienert 1y ago
  I just searched Grok and Grok is both the top ad and the first result. OpenAI is second.
mavhc 1y ago
On play and app stores if you search for Microsoft Authenticator, which I imagine most people working at a company would be doing, there's an Ad first, which is rather annoying for a security application
quitit 1y ago
Results may vary: Searches for Amazon, Temu, Shein - result in each being listed in the promotional panel and then as the first result. For Firefox: Chrome is listed in the promotional panel and Firefox as the first result (below it). The promotional panel has a different background colour and “Ad” badge, but is otherwise identical to other listings. Two results fit on the screen: the promotional panel and the first listing. Diverging from Google is that the ad result is obvious and doesn’t push the search result out of view.
rsolva 1y ago
I usually use the app store in Fedora and am used to finding what I want and having it installed within secounds. Occasionally, I help people with their Mac's, and it can easily take half an hour to get something installed (finding their password etc), and on iOS, there are ads that buries the real results. Then I am reminded how spoiled I am in the Linux world! No ads and quick access to a large selection of open source and commercial programs, no accounts or logins!
xg15 1y ago
As a user, I'm still baffled that the interface to view and manage the apps I have installed on the system - which is 90 out of 100 times why I'm opening the play store - is tucked away in some obscure corner of the app. The other 10 times, it's because I want to install some specific app that I already know and I just want to get to the page of that exact app - either through a direct link or through the store's search. There were exactly zero times where I opened the store with the motivation "gee, I really feel like installing a new app, but I have no idea what it should be... Let's check out the recommendations!" Yet this seems to be what the entire UI is optimized for.
- cryptoz 1y ago
  Opening the App Store to download a bunch of apps - in general - is probably the #1 thing people are doing when they open the App Store. Of course, installing a specific app is a top use case. But I think you're just not the average user. Lots of people open the App Store frequently to just check out what's available. ~10 years ago I would do this all the time. It's fun, kind of like surfin' the net was back in the old days, but in a walled garden of applications.
  - soco 1y ago
    I'm surprised to hear this, as I am in the same boat as the other poster. Of course it makes sense, they wouldn't build that junk if there weren't junk consumers on the market. But I still can't grasp the concept of "just installing apps".
  - y0eswddl 1y ago
    is there actually any data to back up the claim that the "#1 thing people do" is open the app store to see what's available besides your singular story about what you used to do a decade ago when all of this was much more novel in general?
  - frbr 1y ago
    It seems plausible that casual browsing and downloading remains a significant use case. Apple surely wouldn't design the App Store focusing on discovery this way otherwise. Not sure about the #1 activity hypothesis. What I'm certain about though is that the App Store is deeply broken and they've started rushing down the path of platform "enshittification" (real thing) where online platforms become less useful, less enjoyable, or less user-friendly.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
> Does Apple do that on the App Store? Yes. In fact, I often get sponsored stuff before Apple’s own apps, when I’m searching for the Apple app. I’ll also get things like games, when I’m looking for development or productivity apps. It’s crazy. One of the things that I do, each morning, is take a long walk, listening to music. I’m an Apple One subscriber, so there’s no limit to the music from the catalog. I don’t buy individual songs. It’s already been paid, so they aren’t selling me anything. I use the “Discovery Station” playlist, which gives you random songs, based on your preferences. It used to be quite good, but lately, it’s been stuffing weird pop songs into the playlist. These are ones that I’d never listen to, otherwise. I will tell Siri that I don’t like the songs, but they keep coming, anyway. I often dislike up to five songs in a row; at which time, the phone gives up on the station, and starts feeding me random songs from my library. This renders the “Discovery Station” pretty much worthless. It’s fairly obvious that the playlist has been corrupted by paid results. Pandora has always done the best job of selecting relevant unknown music for me, but the limit on skips (even for paid accounts), makes it worthless. Undiscovered music is frequently obscure for a reason, so I can sometimes skip a majority of the selections. I’ve always been puzzled about why Pandora never got borged by Apple or Microsoft. They were excellent, a decade before the AI hype bubble was even a broken rubber on the drug store shelf.
ozgung 1y ago
So they are actually Ad Search engines.
Little_Kitty 1y ago
The sponsored spot is appalling, I reported something that looked dodgy which appeared above the UK gov identity verification for passports and such app. When people search for a specific app, putting something else in front only makes me think you are untrustworthy scum, so my trust in the play store is fundamentally broken. There's a fundamental incompatibility between giving the right result for what was searched for and pushing promoted irrelevant results.
testbjjl 1y ago
> Does Apple do that on the App Store? Yes, this has been my experience, at least on mobile. Is this different for others?
amluto 1y ago
I would love to see trademark law changed to ban this practice. Google, etc should not be allowed to, in effect, charge money to avoid having one’s trademark become a search term for a competitor. Paying for ad slots to raise brand awareness is one thing, but a search for a trademark should resolve first to a valid holder of that trademark.
- xcrjm 1y ago
  Why would that happen? Participating large businesses are completely fine with the existing practice. Sure, someone can bid on your trademark, but you can also bid on theirs and probably don't want to lose that ability.
  - redserk 1y ago
    Fortunately laws aren’t limited to be exclusive to large business interests and, at least occasionally, can be drafted with intent to benefit consumers in a market.
tempodox 1y ago
> Does Apple do that on the App Store? The iOS AppStore is just as bad. Even if your search term is the exact app name, they’ll show you random stuff first (maybe they’re hoping you buy before realizing it wasn’t what you were looking for). And since App Store contents are like 98% crap, the chances of randomly finding something worthwhile are miniscule. Letting users do what they want to is just not a business model for these megacorps.
goldchainposse 1y ago
I don't understand how no one's brought a racketeering suit against them. > You wouldn't want someone looking for your website to find your competitor instead. For a small fee, I can make sure that doesn't happen.

RealStickman_ 1y ago

Testing this with Aurora Store and the search terms actually give me the correct results. Another reason to use that over Google Play Store

irrational 1y ago

I just searched "Firefox" in the app store. The top result is Google Chrome with an Ad indicator (Google paid for higher placement). Second is Firefox.

homebrewer 1y ago
Sometimes it's good to live in a region that no one cares about. I just searched for Firefox in the Android Play Store application, there were no ads, and the first result was Firefox. I also don't get any ads in American and UK podcasts for the same reason (except for those read by the host, but there are few of those and they're easy to ignore).
- xp84 1y ago
  That's interesting. I wish it were more practical to use a dedicated VPN for some less-developed country just for my podcast client.
- pitched 1y ago
  Podcasts are normally plain mp3 (or similar) files that get downloaded as-is off an rss feed, as far as I understand. I don’t think anyone gets extra ads outside the sponsored/host-read ones.
  - jsheard 1y ago
    The big podcast networks like iHeart are able to dynamically splice ads into episodes, so they can be targeted based on geoIP or whatever other signals they have on you.
    - pitched 1y ago
      I listen to a lot of Stuff You Should Know and haven’t noticed. TIL I’m exempt from their targeted ads too!
    - zbrozek 1y ago
      I want a self hosted proxy for podcasts that strips the ads and compresses the audio stream harder before my phone downloads it.
  - rchaud 1y ago
    Everyone posts to centralized RSS feeds these days. The company that owns the feed creates duplicates of the uploaded file, inserts ads into them, and serves a version of the file containing ads localized to the downloader's country. If the same podcast is uploaded to Youtube through the uploader's official channel, it won't contain those ads and you're better off downloading that.
- smcin 1y ago
  Can you tell us which region are you in? (Iceland?) Does anyone publish a scorecard of search results vs Google region settings?
- oefrha 1y ago
  On iOS App Store at least, my observation is they just show you a random irrelevant ad at the top if there’s no one specifically bidding for the term. Well that’s my assumption for why I get irrelevant <app with deep pocket> ads when I search for obscure terms. But maybe they don’t show an ad if there’s no bidder at all for garbage spots in <country>?
- Gander5739 1y ago
  For me the first result was firefox, but it was a sponsored result, the second result was also firefox.
balder1991 1y ago
Same here.
apprentice7 1y ago
I did the same and my first result was NordVPN, lmao.
thenthenthen 1y ago
I mean Google payed Apple 20 Billion to be the default search engine…see: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/google-s-payments-to-apple-reached-20-billion-in-2022-cue-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/google-s-...

DarmokJalad1701 1y ago

Same thing happened to me. I wanted to get "Fit Notes" - a free and ad-free app. I searched for it and the first result is some adware/subscription-based crap. I skip over. I scroll down part the "Sponsored: Related to your search" section with a whole bunch of others. I am still seeing more paid/in-app-purchase/subscription-based apps. At this point I thought that the app didn't exist for newer versions of Android. It turned out that it was the second result, just above the "sponsored" one. It looked so much like a part of the first result that I just skipped over it.

grey-area 1y ago
In A/B tests the lack of clarity probably helped increase ad clicks. The metric they care about went up. It’s why ads in gmail look increasingly like normal messages.

evertedsphere 1y ago

This is also true on Apple's app stores, to be fair. I didn't know this until I got a MacBook Pro recently and my assumption that Apple's controls would be tighter than Google's was proven quite wrong when I opened the Mac App Store for the first rime.

leakycap 1y ago
The Mac App Store is such a wasteland. I don't know why Apple doesn't provide it a budget and some real human curation. The average person searching for Microsoft Word, which is on the App Store, gets screens of templates and junky overpriced apps.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  For all of those app stores, the current approach prints them money and lets them claim impartiality, while still allowing some control through acceptance rules, ToSes and automated security measures. All those things scale well. Any other approach I can think of ends up having corner cases that involve human support or interfacing with regulatory systems - and these things do not scale well.
- xp84 1y ago
  I don't know if curation is really the problem. Nearly every other platform has a search that when you search for "Mr Beast" on YouTube or "Elon Musk" on X they know you mean the popular one and not some 2-bit dork's fan page or parody that happens to have those words in the title/keywords. I think they just (A) have no idea what they're doing when it comes to search and (B) the scamware that fills all their App Stores makes Apple a ton of extra money compared to people finding the real apps which usually are monetized outside the app store due to Apple's absurd revshare.
  - leakycap 1y ago
    > I don't know if curation is really the problem. A lack of oversight is what I see as the problem, and the solution would require a significant human element. Expecting a retailer to know/inspect the product they collect margins on shouldn't be a big ask. The retailer has to know what they're selling, but Apple seems to turn a blind eye to shady listings because of the way Mac App Store results are shown and the lack of useful filtering available to the user.

latexr 1y ago

> Does Apple do that on the App Store? Yes they do. Their search already sucks in normal circumstances—I remember searching for “Pinboard” (the bookmarking service) and had to scroll by thirteen pinball (the game) apps before starting to see Pinboard apps—but you can type in the exact name of the app you want had have an ad for a competitor above it. Not only is it allowed, it’s encouraged.

milch 1y ago
They seem to have fixed that, at least for me all the top results are Pinboard clients or other products with Pinboard in the name. With the ads it really feels like Apple is playing all sides, they almost always show the competitor first. When you search the competitor it's a different competitor at the top. You can keep going until you terminate at some app that presumably pays top dollar to appear as an ad for themselves right above their app in the search results. The only thing I'm surprised by is that they even allow people to put ads over their own first party apps
- frbr 1y ago
  The ad slot is purely a revenue tool, not a discovery aid. It forces developers to pay just to defend their own branded search terms. App Store Search ads are a hidden increase in commissions that you either accept to pay by bidding on your own app's name, or omit at the expense of having competitors show on top of you all the time, stealing your revenue. It creates a significant drain on resources for indies, to the point that it's often no longer worth it to bother creating apps. That's why Apple is now doing everything in their power to make app development easier, but that will more likely increase quantity and not necessarily quality, as it only deepens the ecosystem's problems by inviting more noise. The practical reality is, if you are not VC-backed and if you are not playing the heavy ad spend game, the App Store is more of a barrier than anything else.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
I just tried this, searched for "Pinboard" and it was the first app after one sponsored app (that was oddly completely unrelated). Tried a couple of other things, like "Instapaper" "Unread" and they were the first hits after a single sponsored app.

leakycap 1y ago

> Does Apple do that on the App Store? I believe so - and it seems the devs know it happens, bevause I often see a paid ad for "Chrome" if I search "Chrome"

NothingAboutAny 1y ago

Sometimes it's not even close, I went to download the PAX Australia app and the top result was Revolut. I'd love to know the set of circumstances that the algorithm picked them to sponsor there.

kumarm 1y ago

It is same on PlayStore and AppStore. You would be surprised to know Apple started this in AppStore before Google on PlayStore. I assume it is because Google wanted to be safe from Antitrust lawsuits (Follow Apple rather than going there first).

pinkmuffinere 1y ago

As a curiosity, this is a common strategy for advertising! But people still disagree whether it is the best investment. You can generally win on your own name with comparatively low bids, because it is obviously the most relevant search term, and relevance is often factored into the price you pay for ad placement. So you may choose to bid defensively, to stop competitors from advertising on your name. Even so, the obvious counter-argument is that the person searched for you _explicitly_ by name, so how likely are they to click on your competitor's ads? I don't have a ton of experience, so perhaps some orgs make the decision in a data-driven way, but I suspect most make the decision in a mostly faith-based way.

Theodores 1y ago
As I see it, it is like gambling. If you pay for keywords of a rival brand and you get conversions from it to make it worth your while then you can keep paying for those keywords. So yes, it is a data driven decision. However, it is also faith based. In e-commerce the guys buying the ads are not the brightest on the team. Same goes for their organic SEO counterparts. Their metrics rarely include the metric that matters to the board, namely profit. Their metrics are in sales at best, but most likely just clicks. I have never worked anywhere where it has been joined up. You wouldn't believe how much gets sold at a loss with customer acquisition costing more than the product. Imagine paying lots for the ad, some more for the hosting, some more for the affiliate marketing, then discounting the product and then free shipping, all with an outsourced warehouse that costs a fortune. In regular retail you just don't have this level of waste since there is a different cost structure and growth is unlikely to be double digit. Meanwhile, money is sucked out of the world and funnelled into ad tech. In the olden days adverts might support the local paper so the money stayed in the community.
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
  > If you pay for keywords of a rival brand… it is a data driven decision Right, I think this is easier to quantify. The hard case is advertising on _your own_ name, defensively (to stop others from doing so). I think it is hard to make a truly data driven decision in this case, since you don’t see the clicks you lose. I think you’d have to do a careful A/B test if you want to tease this apart. > the guys buying the ads are not the brightest on the team lol, surprise! I run marketing for a small business, I am the guy buying the ads haha. I’m not offended at all, but am a bit surprised the engineer-vs-sales feud is still alive. Fwiw I also do product design! Can’t we all get along?

bubblethink 1y ago

Same on maps as well. That has actual annoying consequences where you end up at the wrong place.

Marsymars 1y ago

I’ve stopped using either the play/app store to search for apps. I search kagi and then click-through to the appropriate app store.

gibspaulding 1y ago

Just opened the App Store to check. There’s an ad for chrome on the home screen. I click search and before I start typing search suggestions pop up. The first one is for chrome. I type Firefox and click search. The first result is chrome.

milch 1y ago
At least it's always only one ad, but on the other hand it takes up half the screen. Plus the title is the name of the app, not "Firefox". Really, the bar is not very high for ads
- int_19h 1y ago
  The worst thing about it is that it looks exactly like a regular app listing, too. The only indication that it's an ad is a tiny "ad" icon - a pale blue square with slightly paler blue text. And that icon isn't even next to the (large and visible) app name, it's next to the (small and greyed out) tagline.

Cheetah26 1y ago

Learned that App Store does this too during a recent MFA rollout. What really surprised me was that when instructed to install Google Authenticator, a significant portion of people (I'd estimate close to 50%) would search the exact name and then proceed to reach to install the sponsored top result with a completely different name until I stopped them.

alasdairking 1y ago
Absolutely this. It is so disappointing that the big tech companies provide ANOTHER opportunity for less-skilled users to make a mistake. And a mistake that might hurt them with security and certainly cost and functionality. And in a core, security-sensitive function like "what third party apps should I have on my personal device?" This is not searching for fun memes on Reddit!
frbr 1y ago
And you can't even point someone to a specific app without the App Store trying hard to redirect their attention to an alternative.
spogbiper 1y ago
A lot of the MFA apps that Apple allows to appear above the official apps do work, but they have a $10/month subscription fee. The MS Authenticator clones have very similar icons and names
- int_19h 1y ago
  I rather suspect that this kind of thing constitutes the majority of shovelware on all the app stores, rather than outright malware. The latter gets you quickly ejected, but if your app is technically within the rules, it's just a steady trickle of $$$ from people who install it by mistake or because they just don't know better.

thwarted 1y ago

I wonder how much this can end up contributing to the Kleenex-ification of a brand or a term. You search for firefox and random other browsers come up. Now browsers in general are associated with the firefox term. Of course, when it comes down to it, there isn't much difference between browsers anyway, the UI is different but they all need to work with the same websites, and people have been using specific application names in place of the type of data/work ("Excel file" being used to refer to a CSV).

derefr 1y ago
…you might have an argument there for this practice of rival-brand-mark sponsored-placement squatting constituting an odd type of trademark infringement. Imaging if PepsiCo paid grocers to shelve cans of Pepsi right beside cans of Coke, sharing the same inventory tag that just says “Coca Cola”. Coke would definitely be able to sue for something about that, right? Well, isn’t this the same?
- notpushkin 1y ago
  > Imaging if PepsiCo paid grocers to shelve cans of Pepsi right beside cans of Coke I think that part is true? Inventory tag doesn’t matter too much here. Better analogy would be putting Pepsi syrup into a Coke-branded fountain, maybe?
- frbr 1y ago
  Paying to parasitize the brand recognition and trust of a competitor has become the norm. he comparison to retail product squatting perfectly illustrates why this feels like an unfair infringement, not just aggressive marketing.
notpushkin 1y ago
> Now browsers in general are associated with the firefox term. Pardon? I’ve never heard a human call a browser “firefox” (as a generic term), or “chrome” for that matter (though people do assume you use Chrome by default now).

acomjean 1y ago

Try searching for chrome using ma edge. It basically intercepted said search and gave me an ad saying to keep using edge. Thinking back it seems unbeleivable so I searched. https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-windows-10-google-chrome-fight https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-wind...

is_true 1y ago

The Santander bank does the same when you enter the address of a broker while doing a transfer. They show an ad for one of their investment funds

porridgeraisin 1y ago

> Amazon Speaking of amazon... By god amazon search is horrid for this. If you search for HP laptop you get a whole bunch of sponsored Lenovo's at the top of the page.

vkazanov 1y ago
Searching for anything really on amazon is... an experience. 15 sponsored vs nothing of substance. And there is no way to know that a given, say, boardgame is not even available on Amazon. In fact, the results are so bad that most of the time I go through Google.
- fuzzfactor 1y ago
  Every Amazon product page has a unique identifying number within the URL that can be used to relocate that exact product again if it is still online later. If you copy & save the whole URL it works as expected when you paste it into a browser next time, unless that page is gone for good. But if you just read the ID number to somebody and they type it into the search box, the product will appear as a tile surrounded by a few related product tiles and the rest unrelated. Completely outnumbered, and intentionally crafted to make it easier to buy some other product besides the exact one desired. And that's when you already know exactly what you want. Only if you then click on the correct one will it take you back to the exact same product page.
rkomorn 1y ago
I don't have access to any data that supports my vibes, but it just feels like any business that sells stuff has very little incentive to actually give you what you're searching for. I can't think of a single online store that's good at search and it seems like it's because the thought is "don't miss anything that might come close to the search terms". Whether it's Amazon, IKEA, the supermarkets where I live, etc, any search I make comes back with what looks like spray and pray SEO. Maybe it's actually a hard problem to solve, or maybe the goal is "sell anything!" (including better placement the seller pays for) rather than "give the user what they want".

bboygravity 1y ago

Apple is even worse. Try searching for Grok in the app store and it will be almost impossible to find due to some deal they have with OpenAI.

nwienert 1y ago
I just searched Grok and Grok is both the top ad and the first result. OpenAI is second.

mavhc 1y ago

On play and app stores if you search for Microsoft Authenticator, which I imagine most people working at a company would be doing, there's an Ad first, which is rather annoying for a security application

quitit 1y ago

Results may vary: Searches for Amazon, Temu, Shein - result in each being listed in the promotional panel and then as the first result. For Firefox: Chrome is listed in the promotional panel and Firefox as the first result (below it). The promotional panel has a different background colour and “Ad” badge, but is otherwise identical to other listings. Two results fit on the screen: the promotional panel and the first listing. Diverging from Google is that the ad result is obvious and doesn’t push the search result out of view.

rsolva 1y ago

I usually use the app store in Fedora and am used to finding what I want and having it installed within secounds. Occasionally, I help people with their Mac's, and it can easily take half an hour to get something installed (finding their password etc), and on iOS, there are ads that buries the real results. Then I am reminded how spoiled I am in the Linux world! No ads and quick access to a large selection of open source and commercial programs, no accounts or logins!

xg15 1y ago

As a user, I'm still baffled that the interface to view and manage the apps I have installed on the system - which is 90 out of 100 times why I'm opening the play store - is tucked away in some obscure corner of the app. The other 10 times, it's because I want to install some specific app that I already know and I just want to get to the page of that exact app - either through a direct link or through the store's search. There were exactly zero times where I opened the store with the motivation "gee, I really feel like installing a new app, but I have no idea what it should be... Let's check out the recommendations!" Yet this seems to be what the entire UI is optimized for.

cryptoz 1y ago
Opening the App Store to download a bunch of apps - in general - is probably the #1 thing people are doing when they open the App Store. Of course, installing a specific app is a top use case. But I think you're just not the average user. Lots of people open the App Store frequently to just check out what's available. ~10 years ago I would do this all the time. It's fun, kind of like surfin' the net was back in the old days, but in a walled garden of applications.
- soco 1y ago
  I'm surprised to hear this, as I am in the same boat as the other poster. Of course it makes sense, they wouldn't build that junk if there weren't junk consumers on the market. But I still can't grasp the concept of "just installing apps".
- y0eswddl 1y ago
  is there actually any data to back up the claim that the "#1 thing people do" is open the app store to see what's available besides your singular story about what you used to do a decade ago when all of this was much more novel in general?
- frbr 1y ago
  It seems plausible that casual browsing and downloading remains a significant use case. Apple surely wouldn't design the App Store focusing on discovery this way otherwise. Not sure about the #1 activity hypothesis. What I'm certain about though is that the App Store is deeply broken and they've started rushing down the path of platform "enshittification" (real thing) where online platforms become less useful, less enjoyable, or less user-friendly.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

> Does Apple do that on the App Store? Yes. In fact, I often get sponsored stuff before Apple’s own apps, when I’m searching for the Apple app. I’ll also get things like games, when I’m looking for development or productivity apps. It’s crazy. One of the things that I do, each morning, is take a long walk, listening to music. I’m an Apple One subscriber, so there’s no limit to the music from the catalog. I don’t buy individual songs. It’s already been paid, so they aren’t selling me anything. I use the “Discovery Station” playlist, which gives you random songs, based on your preferences. It used to be quite good, but lately, it’s been stuffing weird pop songs into the playlist. These are ones that I’d never listen to, otherwise. I will tell Siri that I don’t like the songs, but they keep coming, anyway. I often dislike up to five songs in a row; at which time, the phone gives up on the station, and starts feeding me random songs from my library. This renders the “Discovery Station” pretty much worthless. It’s fairly obvious that the playlist has been corrupted by paid results. Pandora has always done the best job of selecting relevant unknown music for me, but the limit on skips (even for paid accounts), makes it worthless. Undiscovered music is frequently obscure for a reason, so I can sometimes skip a majority of the selections. I’ve always been puzzled about why Pandora never got borged by Apple or Microsoft. They were excellent, a decade before the AI hype bubble was even a broken rubber on the drug store shelf.

ozgung 1y ago

So they are actually Ad Search engines.

Little_Kitty 1y ago

The sponsored spot is appalling, I reported something that looked dodgy which appeared above the UK gov identity verification for passports and such app. When people search for a specific app, putting something else in front only makes me think you are untrustworthy scum, so my trust in the play store is fundamentally broken. There's a fundamental incompatibility between giving the right result for what was searched for and pushing promoted irrelevant results.

testbjjl 1y ago

> Does Apple do that on the App Store? Yes, this has been my experience, at least on mobile. Is this different for others?

amluto 1y ago

I would love to see trademark law changed to ban this practice. Google, etc should not be allowed to, in effect, charge money to avoid having one’s trademark become a search term for a competitor. Paying for ad slots to raise brand awareness is one thing, but a search for a trademark should resolve first to a valid holder of that trademark.

xcrjm 1y ago
Why would that happen? Participating large businesses are completely fine with the existing practice. Sure, someone can bid on your trademark, but you can also bid on theirs and probably don't want to lose that ability.
- redserk 1y ago
  Fortunately laws aren’t limited to be exclusive to large business interests and, at least occasionally, can be drafted with intent to benefit consumers in a market.

tempodox 1y ago

> Does Apple do that on the App Store? The iOS AppStore is just as bad. Even if your search term is the exact app name, they’ll show you random stuff first (maybe they’re hoping you buy before realizing it wasn’t what you were looking for). And since App Store contents are like 98% crap, the chances of randomly finding something worthwhile are miniscule. Letting users do what they want to is just not a business model for these megacorps.

goldchainposse 1y ago

I don't understand how no one's brought a racketeering suit against them. > You wouldn't want someone looking for your website to find your competitor instead. For a small fee, I can make sure that doesn't happen.