I've also noticed screwy behavior. My app is called "Tea" and it's a fairly well regarded app for tea drinkers.
For the search term "tea", the new algorithm places my app at spot 59 (before it had top billing), and places other irrelevant items, like political tea party stuff, games, and general purpose timers, ahead. If the purpose of the new ranking methodology was to place higher weight on downloads and less on name matching, then there's an unintended consequence of certain niche search terms getting crowded out by tangentially related popular apps. How many people searching "tea" are interested in "M.A.S.H" (result 6) or "Proud Republican"(result 8)? These apps didn't make their bones on tea, but somehow the new algorithm is acting like they did.
This is not to mention that it makes it extraordinarily difficult for folks to find my app if I tell them its name [1]. Here's hoping that this system has more under the hood than meets the eye.
I completely agree, and I rant about this issue on a regular basis to anyone who will listen. Basic search relevance is an incredibly important feature (seems obvious, right?) that Apple is failing to provide. And the App Store has been open for four years! Perhaps it's the weight of the iTunes Music Store legacy code that I presume the App Store leans on which prevents progress? As it stands, the App Store today is worse than the web before Google.
Perhaps this will encourage more unique branding instead of generic terms. It sucks for some decent apps in the short term, but hopefully it will reduce search term squatting in the long term. I doubt this change will be a problem for well-branded apps like Evernote and Dropbox.
This is a good point. Probably long term this is a good change. The thing I was frustrated with is just the lack of a heads up from Apple. Losing > 30% of your sales because all of your search phrases depend on title + keywords sucks. Especially considering they are apps that didn't use the keyword stuffing.
For the search term "tea", the new algorithm places my app at spot 59 (before it had top billing), and places other irrelevant items, like political tea party stuff, games, and general purpose timers, ahead. If the purpose of the new ranking methodology was to place higher weight on downloads and less on name matching, then there's an unintended consequence of certain niche search terms getting crowded out by tangentially related popular apps. How many people searching "tea" are interested in "M.A.S.H" (result 6) or "Proud Republican"(result 8)? These apps didn't make their bones on tea, but somehow the new algorithm is acting like they did.
This is not to mention that it makes it extraordinarily difficult for folks to find my app if I tell them its name [1]. Here's hoping that this system has more under the hood than meets the eye.
1) https://twitter.com/Lady_KatieJane1/statuses/216444225909301...