This is how broken app discovery is on the App Store

[Rogifan]

http://gedblog.com/2014/12/15/how-broken-is-discovery-on-the-app-store-this-broken/

The following list was generated by a manual App Store (iPhone) search on Nov 15th, 2014 for the term “Twitter”. The official app from Twitter is naturally the first result, but the next actual Twitter client (Hootsuite) doesn’t appear on the list until #20 and the next one after that comes in at #62. Even the mega-popular Tweetbot isn’t returned in the results until position #81 and even then, the older v2 of Tweetbot (for iOS 6) comes first. Where’s Twitterrific? Although it contains the word “Twitter” in the app’s name, Twitterrific isn’t seen in the list until you scroll all the way down to #100.

I tested this out and got something similar. Most of the apps that came back were photo collage apps. And when I did a search on podcasts I got results back for Flipboard, radio apps like TuneIn, alarm clock apps, and even an app on fly fishing. Downcast was in the top 10 but other apps like Instacast and Overcast were way down the list. Apple really needs to improve app discovery. It's pathetically bad.

 

[Jessica Lares]

And then developers would complain that their shovelware doesn't get enough exposure on the App Store.

This by the way, is not an issue on the Mac App Store.

Is it an issue? Yes. But it amazes me that the media is now just reporting on it three years later.

 

[TimelessOne]

compare this to Google Play on the same search term Twitter. Almost all of the top 20 are legit twitter apps.