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Nothing is broken and no one is "doing it wrong". It's not broken, it's just inconvenient for you. This sucks for app developers with bad app store SEO and lack

Nothing is broken and no one is "doing it wrong". It's not broken, it's just inconvenient for you. This sucks for app developers with bad app store SEO and lackluster icons, app designs, and screenshots of said designs. Many apps at the bottom of the stack will be neglected. This is a good thing. I'm about to release an app into the app store for the first time and I'm happy about it. This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO and it'll force the, to pay attention to design. Ugly apps aren't always necessarily bad but more ugly apps are bad than ugly apps that are good. This isn't Android. On iOS, users tend to judge an app by its icon and screenshots and they use pretty apps more than they open ugly ones. I didn't make the rules, I just play by them. Developers should be welcoming competition and with so many crap apps out there today it's probably better for good app developers to work on getting their rankings higher while the crap app makers languish at the end of the results. While its bad for developers it's great for buyers. Guess what? There are far more buyers than developers on the app store. You may argue that if developers leave then iOS will die. Not so. Again, iOS users are a different animal. They can live with just a few big name apps from the major players. Android users tend to like lots of apps from indie devs and iOS users do too but if push came to shove they'd just keep their Angry Birds, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp and go on with their day. Screenshots are very important in the buying process and putting them front and center like this. As developers we tend to think we're the center of the universe. We place far too much importance on our role than is deserved. Witness the outrage over Twitter's API. While developers were screaming about revolt the users barely noticed and kept tweeting away. Meanwhile Twitter pretty much gave us the finger because they know we'll be back because they have the users. Developers are like parents in a way. We raise a platform then the platform rebels. We threaten to cut them off but by that point the platform is all grown up and doesn't need our help anymore. iOS won't be hurt by developers leaving. If developers leave over not being found in search results then by definition they're leaving because no one's using the app. Who's going to miss an app that never gets used?

tzs 14y ago
As a buyer, I don't see how it is great for me. When I search on the App Store there are usually several hits in the results that are not at all interesting to me, and ahead of the hits that better match what I'm looking for. I want to see several results at once so I can pick which ones I want to look into more deeply. If I have to step through them one at a time with a noticeable delay at each step, I'm not going to be a happy buyer.
- bpatrianakos 14y ago
  You want this. You have certain tastes and preferences and expectations but you (and me and everyone else who reads HN) are not representative of the typical user. For a community all about entrepreneurship and building things for others you'd think we'd figure out by now that we are not the customer (unless you run some business directed directly at tech savvy people but you get my point). Also, I am astounded at the hubris people display when faced with minor annoyances like this. Don't like the new App Store design? Well then it's fucking broken! We are all a bunch of nobody's trying to scream louder than all the other nobodies about how smart we are and how we'd do a better job but most of the time its all bullshit. It takes some balls to think you're smarter and can do better than the most valuable company on earth. Every time someone is annoyed by something someone inevitably comes out and says its the wrong way to do it. Well there's an easy way to test if you're right or not. If the App Store stops making money any time between now and, let's be generous, the next time they change the App Store UI then you'll be right. But as long as they're making billions off this thing I feel pretty confident in saying they're doing something right and I sincerely doubt they'd do anything to harm their baby. Think about it: it you run a company and have a successful product why would you change it? You wouldn't change it because some asshole designer has some extra time on his hands and thinks he came up with something prettier. No. You'd change it because you have the data that tells you it's going to make you more money if you do. I'll never understand why people think these huge multi-bazillion dollar companies are being run by total morons. And make no mistake, if you write a blog post about how billion dollar product X is broken because they changed its color or something then you're taking the position that the company has as its decision makers a bunch of morons taking shots in the dark. And one more thing: did you notice it? Someone did. Something changed and then someone complained about it (even going as far as to say its broken). Of course. Human beings hate all change and we'll fight it to the death even if it's for the better. Six months from now the same people who hate this will be same ones who will fight to keep the very design they hated (if they ever decide to change it) just to avoid change. Because change is scary and involves learning a new thing and what if you're not good at the new thing and the cycle of anxiety provoking thoughts begins...
  - flatline3 14y ago
havemurci 14y ago
It's a nice thought but there's just one catch. This new interface makes it difficult for new applications to be 'discovered', especially if they're not chosen by Apple to be shown near the top of the stack. Yes, it will force developers to do better App store SEO, but that's not what we want. We want users to be able to use apps that have better design. To me this new layout makes it harder for users to compare apps, and thus makes it harder for them to find the ones that are the most well-designed. If, as you say, the users naturally gravitate toward using more well-designed apps, then what's wrong with the current system? If I were you, I would worry that your new app -- even if it's revolutionary, even if it's the prettiest App in the App Store -- would be stuck at the bottom of the list, because Apple chose to dedicate more space to the flashy apps that are already ranked first.
cageface 14y ago
Everything you say will be true as soon as Apple's search is good enough to reward quality apps instead of SEO hackers. Until then, this is a step backwards.
- ryguytilidie 14y ago
  Well his main suggestion for app makers to get better in the store is to "focus on SEO" so I think he disagrees with you.
greendestiny 14y ago
You missed the important part about the broken nature of App Store SEO. It isn't good for buyers or developers to show less results when search results are very poor. The quality of your design will not matter at all if no one sees your icon. You need much better quality results for good usability with 1 result per page.
gurkendoktor 14y ago
> They can live with just a few big name apps from the major players. Android users tend to like lots of apps from indie devs and iOS users do too but if push came to shove they'd just keep their Angry Birds, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp and go on with their day. I am not sure I am parsing this correctly - but I would guess that iOS users care a lot more about indie apps than Android users do. (iPad and iPod touch users even more than iPhone users) Is there any data on this? As an iOS consumer, the indie developers are indeed the center of the universe for me (or at least the center of the App Store). But then I'm also considering an Xbox 360 for XBLA only :)
jayfuerstenberg 14y ago
If you're about to release your first app on the app store you're not qualified to understand its dynamics. Sorry. I believe this redesign is a small step backward, and some sort of step forward. Showing a screenshot is a good idea but users are notoriously lazy and won't venture past even a few results so it creates a feedback loop where only the best performers get rewarded, further fueling that performance.
- drgath 14y ago
  > If you're about to release your first app on the app store you're not qualified to understand its dynamics. Sorry. Possibly. But it does mean he's more qualified to view the App Store from a user's perspective, instead of a developer's. The App Store is designed for users, not for developers, which was his whole point.
  - jayfuerstenberg 14y ago
    OP is thinking he can enter the app store and have his app somehow be better than all the apps that came before it to the point where it'll rise to the top in iOS 6's listings. My app (KEYBOX) has been on the app store for over a year and in magazines and whatnot and I've ASO'd it to quite an extent where the sales have stabilized but penetrating the first few pages for most searches in various languages still proves challenging. Users fall into roughly 3 categories... 1. Actively looking for your app (be it by name or function) and will buy right away. 2. Not looking for your app but may buy if they stumble upon it. 3. Not looking for your app and and wouldn't buy even if they stumbled upon it. We developers don't have to do much to get users from group #1, and #3 is simply not interested. We want to be in front of the eyeballs of members of group #2. Apple's rankings are still a black box but the higher up our apps appear in the listings the more likely they are to be seen and therefore purchased. The app store is designed to make money above all else and if Apple wants to keep it that way it needs to make sure apps aren't hidden in the catacombs of the app store. This redesign my end up doing just that.
Zaheer 14y ago
Any resources you suggest for learning App Store SEO?
- joeld42 14y ago
  1) Have a long title with keywords in it: "Super Task: The todo organizer time management for agile" 2) Pick good keywords. Repeat them in your description copy. 3) Get everyone you know to give you a 5-star review when you launch. That's about it. There's not much more you can do.
  - taligent 14y ago
    Actually this could be bad advice in the new model. You see the App Store search is still at its core just a Lucene index. In which case the weightings are likely to be similar: titlePhrase 9 / authorPhrase 9 / subjectPhrase 9 / genrePhrase 9 / titleWords 3 / authorWords 3 / subjectWords 3 / genreWords 3 / titleExact 20 / authorExact 18 As you could see just stuffing keywords will guarantee you appear in lots of different searches but not necessarily ranked highly in any of them. Really depends on the type of app you sell.
mikemoka 14y ago
This will raise the bar for the users as well unfortunately and I hope they will evaluate throughly. A sample scenario: I am on the move and I am looking for an app, I search with a keyword x, but I can only see ONE app at a time so: 1- I can't quickly compare the first search results and pick one in particular 2- If I want to see all the search results I have to swipe as many times as the number of the search results themselves 3-Finally I have to remember what I liked best then swipe all the way back to it How can this be convenient for me, especially if I am in a hurry?
clarky07 14y ago
what you don't realize since you are just starting is that Apple just changed the search results to weight time on store and number of downloads more heavily. That means your SEO isn't going to put you in the front right away. this change is going to have the effect of less total apps seen which is going to make it even harder for new apps. I just had an app that got covered by several major blogs, good reviews, and had hundreds of downloads for the first few days. After a month I'm now getting between 0-2 downloads a day, and I'm 8 for the search of my app name.
tomjen3 14y ago
When I search the app store I am not looking for a pretty app. I am looking for a very specific app. But you are properly right. Apple doesn't get that functionality is so much more important than estethics.
ryguytilidie 14y ago
Lord knows that the main thing I want is an app that focuses on SEO over good design.
apphero 14y ago
I'm sorry Bill but I am going to have to respectfully disagree. The App Store is broken and Apple is doing it wrong. The point of search is to find new interesting apps. With over 700,000 apps on the App Store, search is the only way most indie devs get sales. And with the new changes, even the best devs cannot rank high on search. We do not think we are the center of the universe. However, we are an important park of Apple's ecosystem. We helped build the App Store to where it is today. As of right now, it feels like Apple is kicking us to the curb, Just read some of the app dev forums around the web. A lot of us lost money over Apple's decisions last summer. And we will continue to lose money. Please come back and comment when you have released you first app. If spending thousands of marketing dollars on my already popular apps did not decelerate my sales freefall, then most new apps on the App Store have very little chance at succeeding. A new paid app will never rank high on search. That's the state of things right now. For some reason, Apple's new search algorithm prefers free apps over paid apps and older apps over newer apps.
k-mcgrady 14y ago
This is bad for developers and users. Users see less results and will miss out on quality apps. And do you really think it's good to reward app store SEO?? >> "This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO" How is this a good thing? Would you not rather spend time developing a great app. This just creates an opportunity for people to become more successful through gaming the store. Trust me, after you've released your app to the store and you see the importance search ranking has (and how difficult it is to acquire the things you need to rank high) you will change your opinion on this.
alex_c 14y ago
>This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO and it'll force the, to pay attention to design. [...] Developers should be welcoming competition and with so many crap apps out there today it's probably better for good app developers to work on getting their rankings higher while the crap app makers languish at the end of the results. Good comment, but I don't agree with this part. This does very little to help "good app developers" or encourage competition. The app store is very strongly biased towards the first few hits for a given search result. As a small to medium developer, if you're not in the top 5-10, depending on the keyword, you may as well not exist. And that ranking depends first and foremost on your ability to drive downloads to your app, and a distant second on your app quality. This change will make the bias that much stronger towards the first 1-3 apps. They'll tend to stay there, while other apps will have that much harder a time to move up. I LOVE that screenshots are more visible. It's great for users, and it's great for quality apps. I have a great app currently ranking in the lower range of top 10 for my targeted keyword, and slowly moving up because - in my opinion at least - it's higher quality than the apps above. Great icon, great screenshots, app looks and behaves great. So you'd think I'd be ecstatic about this change. Actually, I'm worried this change will stop my app dead in its tracks, and further consolidate the top 1-3 positions. Can you explain to me how that's good for either of users, developers, or competition?
tsunamifury 14y ago
"I'm about to release an app into the app store for the first time and I'm happy about it." You are like a virgin trying to give advise to prostitutes on the street corner on how to improve their game. You literally have no idea what you are stepping into.

tzs 14y ago

As a buyer, I don't see how it is great for me. When I search on the App Store there are usually several hits in the results that are not at all interesting to me, and ahead of the hits that better match what I'm looking for. I want to see several results at once so I can pick which ones I want to look into more deeply. If I have to step through them one at a time with a noticeable delay at each step, I'm not going to be a happy buyer.

bpatrianakos 14y ago
You want this. You have certain tastes and preferences and expectations but you (and me and everyone else who reads HN) are not representative of the typical user. For a community all about entrepreneurship and building things for others you'd think we'd figure out by now that we are not the customer (unless you run some business directed directly at tech savvy people but you get my point). Also, I am astounded at the hubris people display when faced with minor annoyances like this. Don't like the new App Store design? Well then it's fucking broken! We are all a bunch of nobody's trying to scream louder than all the other nobodies about how smart we are and how we'd do a better job but most of the time its all bullshit. It takes some balls to think you're smarter and can do better than the most valuable company on earth. Every time someone is annoyed by something someone inevitably comes out and says its the wrong way to do it. Well there's an easy way to test if you're right or not. If the App Store stops making money any time between now and, let's be generous, the next time they change the App Store UI then you'll be right. But as long as they're making billions off this thing I feel pretty confident in saying they're doing something right and I sincerely doubt they'd do anything to harm their baby. Think about it: it you run a company and have a successful product why would you change it? You wouldn't change it because some asshole designer has some extra time on his hands and thinks he came up with something prettier. No. You'd change it because you have the data that tells you it's going to make you more money if you do. I'll never understand why people think these huge multi-bazillion dollar companies are being run by total morons. And make no mistake, if you write a blog post about how billion dollar product X is broken because they changed its color or something then you're taking the position that the company has as its decision makers a bunch of morons taking shots in the dark. And one more thing: did you notice it? Someone did. Something changed and then someone complained about it (even going as far as to say its broken). Of course. Human beings hate all change and we'll fight it to the death even if it's for the better. Six months from now the same people who hate this will be same ones who will fight to keep the very design they hated (if they ever decide to change it) just to avoid change. Because change is scary and involves learning a new thing and what if you're not good at the new thing and the cycle of anxiety provoking thoughts begins...
- flatline3 14y ago

havemurci 14y ago

It's a nice thought but there's just one catch. This new interface makes it difficult for new applications to be 'discovered', especially if they're not chosen by Apple to be shown near the top of the stack. Yes, it will force developers to do better App store SEO, but that's not what we want. We want users to be able to use apps that have better design. To me this new layout makes it harder for users to compare apps, and thus makes it harder for them to find the ones that are the most well-designed. If, as you say, the users naturally gravitate toward using more well-designed apps, then what's wrong with the current system? If I were you, I would worry that your new app -- even if it's revolutionary, even if it's the prettiest App in the App Store -- would be stuck at the bottom of the list, because Apple chose to dedicate more space to the flashy apps that are already ranked first.

cageface 14y ago

Everything you say will be true as soon as Apple's search is good enough to reward quality apps instead of SEO hackers. Until then, this is a step backwards.

ryguytilidie 14y ago
Well his main suggestion for app makers to get better in the store is to "focus on SEO" so I think he disagrees with you.

greendestiny 14y ago

You missed the important part about the broken nature of App Store SEO. It isn't good for buyers or developers to show less results when search results are very poor. The quality of your design will not matter at all if no one sees your icon. You need much better quality results for good usability with 1 result per page.

gurkendoktor 14y ago

> They can live with just a few big name apps from the major players. Android users tend to like lots of apps from indie devs and iOS users do too but if push came to shove they'd just keep their Angry Birds, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp and go on with their day. I am not sure I am parsing this correctly - but I would guess that iOS users care a lot more about indie apps than Android users do. (iPad and iPod touch users even more than iPhone users) Is there any data on this? As an iOS consumer, the indie developers are indeed the center of the universe for me (or at least the center of the App Store). But then I'm also considering an Xbox 360 for XBLA only :)

jayfuerstenberg 14y ago

If you're about to release your first app on the app store you're not qualified to understand its dynamics. Sorry. I believe this redesign is a small step backward, and some sort of step forward. Showing a screenshot is a good idea but users are notoriously lazy and won't venture past even a few results so it creates a feedback loop where only the best performers get rewarded, further fueling that performance.

drgath 14y ago
> If you're about to release your first app on the app store you're not qualified to understand its dynamics. Sorry. Possibly. But it does mean he's more qualified to view the App Store from a user's perspective, instead of a developer's. The App Store is designed for users, not for developers, which was his whole point.
- jayfuerstenberg 14y ago
  OP is thinking he can enter the app store and have his app somehow be better than all the apps that came before it to the point where it'll rise to the top in iOS 6's listings. My app (KEYBOX) has been on the app store for over a year and in magazines and whatnot and I've ASO'd it to quite an extent where the sales have stabilized but penetrating the first few pages for most searches in various languages still proves challenging. Users fall into roughly 3 categories... 1. Actively looking for your app (be it by name or function) and will buy right away. 2. Not looking for your app but may buy if they stumble upon it. 3. Not looking for your app and and wouldn't buy even if they stumbled upon it. We developers don't have to do much to get users from group #1, and #3 is simply not interested. We want to be in front of the eyeballs of members of group #2. Apple's rankings are still a black box but the higher up our apps appear in the listings the more likely they are to be seen and therefore purchased. The app store is designed to make money above all else and if Apple wants to keep it that way it needs to make sure apps aren't hidden in the catacombs of the app store. This redesign my end up doing just that.

Zaheer 14y ago

Any resources you suggest for learning App Store SEO?

joeld42 14y ago
1) Have a long title with keywords in it: "Super Task: The todo organizer time management for agile" 2) Pick good keywords. Repeat them in your description copy. 3) Get everyone you know to give you a 5-star review when you launch. That's about it. There's not much more you can do.
- taligent 14y ago
  Actually this could be bad advice in the new model. You see the App Store search is still at its core just a Lucene index. In which case the weightings are likely to be similar: titlePhrase 9 / authorPhrase 9 / subjectPhrase 9 / genrePhrase 9 / titleWords 3 / authorWords 3 / subjectWords 3 / genreWords 3 / titleExact 20 / authorExact 18 As you could see just stuffing keywords will guarantee you appear in lots of different searches but not necessarily ranked highly in any of them. Really depends on the type of app you sell.

mikemoka 14y ago

This will raise the bar for the users as well unfortunately and I hope they will evaluate throughly. A sample scenario: I am on the move and I am looking for an app, I search with a keyword x, but I can only see ONE app at a time so: 1- I can't quickly compare the first search results and pick one in particular 2- If I want to see all the search results I have to swipe as many times as the number of the search results themselves 3-Finally I have to remember what I liked best then swipe all the way back to it How can this be convenient for me, especially if I am in a hurry?

clarky07 14y ago

what you don't realize since you are just starting is that Apple just changed the search results to weight time on store and number of downloads more heavily. That means your SEO isn't going to put you in the front right away. this change is going to have the effect of less total apps seen which is going to make it even harder for new apps. I just had an app that got covered by several major blogs, good reviews, and had hundreds of downloads for the first few days. After a month I'm now getting between 0-2 downloads a day, and I'm 8 for the search of my app name.

tomjen3 14y ago

When I search the app store I am not looking for a pretty app. I am looking for a very specific app. But you are properly right. Apple doesn't get that functionality is so much more important than estethics.

ryguytilidie 14y ago

Lord knows that the main thing I want is an app that focuses on SEO over good design.

apphero 14y ago

I'm sorry Bill but I am going to have to respectfully disagree. The App Store is broken and Apple is doing it wrong. The point of search is to find new interesting apps. With over 700,000 apps on the App Store, search is the only way most indie devs get sales. And with the new changes, even the best devs cannot rank high on search. We do not think we are the center of the universe. However, we are an important park of Apple's ecosystem. We helped build the App Store to where it is today. As of right now, it feels like Apple is kicking us to the curb, Just read some of the app dev forums around the web. A lot of us lost money over Apple's decisions last summer. And we will continue to lose money. Please come back and comment when you have released you first app. If spending thousands of marketing dollars on my already popular apps did not decelerate my sales freefall, then most new apps on the App Store have very little chance at succeeding. A new paid app will never rank high on search. That's the state of things right now. For some reason, Apple's new search algorithm prefers free apps over paid apps and older apps over newer apps.

k-mcgrady 14y ago

This is bad for developers and users. Users see less results and will miss out on quality apps. And do you really think it's good to reward app store SEO?? >> "This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO" How is this a good thing? Would you not rather spend time developing a great app. This just creates an opportunity for people to become more successful through gaming the store. Trust me, after you've released your app to the store and you see the importance search ranking has (and how difficult it is to acquire the things you need to rank high) you will change your opinion on this.

alex_c 14y ago

>This will raise the bar for developers. It'll force them to do better app store SEO and it'll force the, to pay attention to design. [...] Developers should be welcoming competition and with so many crap apps out there today it's probably better for good app developers to work on getting their rankings higher while the crap app makers languish at the end of the results. Good comment, but I don't agree with this part. This does very little to help "good app developers" or encourage competition. The app store is very strongly biased towards the first few hits for a given search result. As a small to medium developer, if you're not in the top 5-10, depending on the keyword, you may as well not exist. And that ranking depends first and foremost on your ability to drive downloads to your app, and a distant second on your app quality. This change will make the bias that much stronger towards the first 1-3 apps. They'll tend to stay there, while other apps will have that much harder a time to move up. I LOVE that screenshots are more visible. It's great for users, and it's great for quality apps. I have a great app currently ranking in the lower range of top 10 for my targeted keyword, and slowly moving up because - in my opinion at least - it's higher quality than the apps above. Great icon, great screenshots, app looks and behaves great. So you'd think I'd be ecstatic about this change. Actually, I'm worried this change will stop my app dead in its tracks, and further consolidate the top 1-3 positions. Can you explain to me how that's good for either of users, developers, or competition?

tsunamifury 14y ago

"I'm about to release an app into the app store for the first time and I'm happy about it." You are like a virgin trying to give advise to prostitutes on the street corner on how to improve their game. You literally have no idea what you are stepping into.