I am sure they will too, but meanwhile, the harm is done for a lot of people. If for 1 full week, you're on uneven foot with your competition and drops in rank low enough, it could simply kill your app and make it extremely hard to recover. Each day means $100.00 less possibly for mid-volume apps and 2-3 ranks drop... while the others thrive.
No kidding. I'm furious about this. My app disappeared off the top 100 after one day of updating my description. The lite version i did not update the description and it moved up actually. In one day I went from rolling in the dough to nothing!!! FU APPLE!
Yeah just as I thought this is killing me off, my sales are down 80% :-~ Apple should tell ALL developers ASAP that they have to update the Keywords, if they don't then their Apps WILL NOT show up in the searches. It's just not on that devs who haven't updated they keywords are still enjoying the descriptive search text. If Apple should also let us change the keywords until they make this all official with all the other developers out there.
Yes, poorly handled by Apple. Actually a decent plan to level the playing field but poorly impilmented. They could have simply done this:
1. email notice to all developers explaining the *upcomming* change.
2. Require meta keywords to be inputted by a certain date
3. After that date description keywords no longer work and meta keywords do.
How hard would that have been to do? Instead they have countless developers freaked out, doing detective work on forums, wondering why they no longer appear in searches. And an unfair playing field while developers, either savy or by chance enjoy description keyword search results. Go figure.
Yeah just as I thought this is killing me off, my sales are down 80% :-~ Apple should tell ALL developers ASAP that they have to update the Keywords, if they don't then their Apps WILL NOT show up in the searches. It's just not on that devs who haven't updated they keywords are still enjoying the descriptive search text. If Apple should also let us change the keywords until they make this all official with all the other developers out there.
Bah!
Apple is telling developers now. This is at the top of iTunes Connect for me.
"Keywords must now be entered for your applications on iTunes Connect. Customers will be able to search the App Store by your designated keywords. You must separate your keywords by commas when entering them on the application information page and are limited to 100 characters. It is important to enter keywords for all applications as soon as possible so your application can continue to be successfully located on the App Store. Keywords can be updated with either the submission of a new binary, or if the application status is Rejected, or Developer Rejected."
It implies that if you don't enter keywords then your app will not be searchable after some unknown date.
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Apple is telling developers now. This is at the top of iTunes Connect for me.
"Keywords must now be entered for your applications on iTunes Connect. Customers will be able to search the App Store by your designated keywords. You must separate your keywords by commas when entering them on the application information page and are limited to 100 characters. It is important to enter keywords for all applications as soon as possible so your application can continue to be successfully located on the App Store. Keywords can be updated with either the submission of a new binary, or if the application status is Rejected, or Developer Rejected."
It implies that if you don't enter keywords then your app will not be searchable after some unknown date.
Thanks for the update Robert, I missed that. That's great news, I've got an update due in the next week or so so hopefully I'll only be hit for a minimum of 4 weeks until I can update my keywords.
It is a nice note... but not helping a lot of us unfortunately... This forum is still small so I don't expect a lot of feedback, but I am willing to bet that this change did affect the living of hundreds of developers. Again, I have no issue playing by the rules, but it would be nice to play by EVEN rules.
It is a nice note... but not helping a lot of us unfortunately... This forum is still small so I don't expect a lot of feedback, but I am willing to bet that this change did affect the living of hundreds of developers. Again, I have no issue playing by the rules, but it would be nice to play by EVEN rules.
Yeah my App Finger Draw was in the top 100 for entertainment (#94) which ok isn't amazing but it was creeping up the chart ... and now it's dropped to nearer the bottom end of top 200! It's a drawing App but if you type in Paint or Brushes it doesn't even come up as I just entered 'Painting, Drawing' and a few other keywords with the intent to update them later when I had more time ... but as we all now know this isn't possible ubless you do an update. The only good thing I guess is that we've got a big update out soon so I need to investigate the best use of Keywords. Has anyone seen any good articles on this?
Come on Apple pull your finger out! Make it an even playing field again!
Very unhappy here as well. I saw the notice and updated my keywords only to have sales drop off considerably. You'd think they'd at least factor in the description until everyone has been forced to add keywords. Has Apple provided any further info on this?
Yarg, I notced you are #13 now so the new keywords must be working out for you. What I am trying to figure out for my next app is whether the TITLE is included in Apple's search results or not. I did include it in my current keyords of my current app and am doing fine, but I wonder if that is wasting character space in the keywords?
Does anyone know if you need to repeat your title in the keywords (if it happens to be descriptive of your app)?
thanks
It appears that your title will still count, but keywords take precedence. My app is "Passport Photo Machine". Before the keywords, my app would show up as #1 when searching for "passport". After keywords took effect (but before I added mine), I was down arond #5 on the list with the same search string. The apps that were showing up above me did *not* have "passport" in their title. After getting mine added (and corrected) I went back to #1 in the search results.
Yarg, I notced you are #13 now so the new keywords must be working out for you. What I am trying to figure out for my next app is whether the TITLE is included in Apple's search results or not. I did include it in my current keyords of my current app and am doing fine, but I wonder if that is wasting character space in the keywords?
Does anyone know if you need to repeat your title in the keywords (if it happens to be descriptive of your app)?
thanks
Thanks for taking the time to check. Do you mind if I ask what you are searching for? ‘Finger Draw’, reached 94 in the Entertainment’s category and now it’s gone off the radar completely. Sales are really bad. Interestingly my other App ‘Bat & Ball Retro’’ is actually getting stronger but that’s because I haven’t updated the keywords and I guess the App Store is still using the description.
It appears that your title will still count, but keywords take precedence. My app is "Passport Photo Machine". Before the keywords, my app would show up as #1 when searching for "passport". After keywords took effect (but before I added mine), I was down arond #5 on the list with the same search string. The apps that were showing up above me did *not* have "passport" in their title. After getting mine added (and corrected) I went back to #1 in the search results.
I think the keyword thing will work well if you know what you’re doing and it’s an even playing field .. which clearly it isn’t. The question is what’s the best method .. for example until I get an update out for ‘Finger Draw’ I’ve got ‘painting, drawing, ‘’ and a couple (and sadly I do mean only a couple) of other keywords but I can’t remember. What they are at the mo. I was expecting that if you typed in ‘Paint’ my app would appear as I’ve got Painting as a keyword .. it seems this is not the case. So I guess I would have to include both keywords, ‘Paint, Painting, Draw, Drawing … ‘ etc.. but when you’ve only got 100 chars that’s not that much to play with. If you type in ‘Draw’ it comes up but that’s because ‘Draw’ is in the title.
In theory you would have thought that the Title would take priority and then the keywords .. is there any logic to Apple's madness? ;-) If you’ve got the keyword in the title and you’ve also used it as one of your keywords, does it score higher? In my eyes it should as you used up some of the valuable space to show that this word does mean something as you've used it in the title and as a keyword .. anyway if someone can find a 'howto' on what we're meant to be doing I'd be very grateful.
And there's me thinking that perhaps one day I may be able to do this thing full-time .. oh well I'd better get ready for work otherwise I'll be late
And there's me thinking that perhaps one day I may be able to do this thing full-time .. oh well I'd better get ready for work otherwise I'll be late
Yep, it's killed a lot of enthusiasm for me too. The thing that angers me the most is that those who have done the right thing have been effectively punished. At least make both the description and keywords play a role in search until forcing the change on everyone...
Thanks for taking the time to check. Do you mind if I ask what you are searching for? ‘Finger Draw’, reached 94 in the Entertainment’s category and now it’s gone off the radar completely. Sales are really bad. Interestingly my other App ‘Bat & Ball Retro’’ is actually getting stronger but that’s because I haven’t updated the keywords and I guess the App Store is still using the description.
I think it was *draw*, but not sure - I just checked that and got you at 21, so I'm not sure.
I don't have any apps accepted as of yet but I have one in the process of being reviewed. My problem is that I have a keyword that is possibly objectionable and I really really don't want my app to get rejected because of something as stupid as that. Judging by the fact that you can't change keywords later, I would guess that they can reject apps because of that. I haven't found anyone who has been rejected by this yet though.
I think Apple should implement a system where if they don't like your keywords or app rating then they give you their preferred rating or keywords and you can decide whether to use their supplied rating/keywords or to resubmit your binary. This would save many developers tons of time because having to resubmit a binary because of unacceptable meta-data is just a horrible waste of time and self esteem.
No you're not crazy. A month ago or so my Finger Draw App was going up the Entertainment Charts, got to #94 and then I updated my description, saw the new keywords section, just added a few thinking I could come back to it .. and then bam ... the next day my sales started to decline .. yesterday I think I had 4 sales I've ranted about this before .. it's just not on. Apple need to make the playing field even.
I've got an update for another app (Bat & Ball Retro) due but I'm holding off on it as I haven't added any keywords for the App so the search is just working off the title and description but saying that I think they've changed the rules on that again. Keywords that used to work in my Bat & Ball description now don't and that's only recent. Perhaps Apple are trying to clear up their act?
watch out everyone.... apple appears to be changing the rules again. I had another app update rejected because they didn't like any extra words in the name. I had an app with a short name, and a 3 extra words to help describe it and I just got rejected because of it.
My question is when are they going to kick off the dozens of top 100 apps that contain more than just a name in the name field?
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