I love the iPhone app store, but it’s a victim of it’s own success as more developers submit apps. Thinking way back (about 2 months ago) it was easy to find an app you wanted because there wasn’t that many. But now, it’s life-draining to wade through all of the apps to find a hidden gem you may have missed, so i now only check the recent and what’s hot pages.

With many apps being added constantly, how do you ensure as a developer you don’t get buried?

Well, you may have noticed that there is a ridiculous amount of updates for the apps you have downloaded (i’ve got 10 waiting right now), which seems fine if it has just been released to iron out bugs, but how many problems can these apps really have on an on-going basis? So i thought maybe they were giving me more cool stuff to add to the apps, unfortunately not.

What is actually happening is they have been taking advantage of the way the app store is categorising new applications. Every new app update release meant that the app store thought it was a new release which meant a front page slot. Timing of pushed updates became critical in order to maximise front page position and downloads. Easy SEO or what?

Unfortunately, the latest release means that apps are no longer categorised in this way but are solely based on the first date of release, which Apple say should aid more innovation within app development. Short-lived but brilliant.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 10:01 am and is filed under app store, iphone, apple, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.