Well, they're at least aware of the issues...
Yeah, that's nice that they're aware of the issue... (though they'd have to be completely 100% brain dead and stuck in a dark cave without internet access NOT to know). The problem (as I see it) is that a) there's nothing we can do other than send an email (which I of course did as soon as I noticed the problem, and I"m amazed you actually heard back.. typically I've not heard anything at all, or it's taken them weeks to respond to those!)
The only reason this is being fixed "fast" is because it's affecting Apple's bottom line (and certainly pissing off lots of their "prime" app store companies, EA, etc.) so they'll move fast to fix it. What sucks is that when it was just MY app which mysteriously stopped showing in the search results when all my competitors apps still were, that nothing changed for a full week, then they fixed it, then it happened again. And what's my recourse? Absolutely nothing at all, I'm one developer of one app, they wouldn't miss a beat if my app simply disappeared. That's the incredibly scary thing with the app store... but the payout is good for now so I keep playing the game, scared to death of what tomorrow brings!
Sorry if that was a downer... I'm glad things are (mostly) back to normal now... though rankings are now frozen to what they were 3 days ago... better than nothing though (for me at least)
P.S. Oh, and I didn't notice you were responding to me on that... I'm not trying to make light of the situation (or was I?) I agree it's a horrible terrible thing to have happen (unless you get to be one of the lucky ones that gets a couple hours in the top 100). I'm just saying, I'm doing as much as I can at this point to market outside of the app store because there's no transparency, accountability and predictability... The good thing about your campaign is that you're surely direct linking to the app so at least you'll have downloads while others based on rank alone don't. But yeah, who knows when the rankings will start to be updated again (and if all this period will be thrown out of the algorithm due to the biased sales from the original rankings messup... that would ultra suck for you and I can only imagine the frustration (well not only imagine since I've had similar problems...)
Whew... that's long
