Are Keyword Spamming Apps Soiling The App Store?
May 7, 2010
Instapaper's developer Marco Arment points out an interesting problem on the App Store today; keyword spamming apps.
Keyword spamming apps? Yep, these are the apps that show up in App Store search results which clearly shouldn't be there. In his example, Arment is looking for Angry Birds by Clickgamer.com and while the right result did come up first, 6 of the next 9 results are what he calls "pure spam". To fully understand the problem, let's examine how this works. When a developer submits an app, he must enter a certain amount of keywords (100 characters total) that define his app and will help users find it. Apple has detailed their expectations for what developers should use as keywords, and created rules banning developers from using other application names in their keywords. Unfortunately, in looking at App Store results it is clear Apple is having a hard time enforcing these rules. When delving deeper into the problem we see Apple actually expects developers to inform them (mail) directly themselves in case of abuse. Since Apple is not enforcing this rule very well, some malicious developers are using their keywords to show up in search results for other more popular apps. In addition to just using popular app titles, common examples of not relevant additions used by developers to show up in popular search results are cheats, trivia, and special edition in their apps' name. Many times these keyword spamming apps are also actually scams, as many of them don’t have much value. Most people who end up buying these apps do so by mistake because of their names and the search result. This issue surly needs to be addressed and corrected in Cupertino. Until then, be careful when you buy apps through the search function. You might just being paying for an app that is nothing more than keyword spam.