I know that this is not the prettiest app on the planet. One of the reasons I've been asking about paying for graphics, is that this is the result when I'm working on my own with GIMP.
It gets 40 to 60 downloads a weekday. About 80 on both Saturday and Sunday. It usually gets a bump on the weekend. But this weekend, I was looking at 122 and 135 downloads. Almost all of the increase came from the United States.
I'm not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth. But I'm trying to figure out why. I haven't done an update in a little while and while I did receive a review, it was 4 stars. Hardly something that generates a 50% increase in downloads.
I'm speculating that the App Store search formula may have been altered by Apple. It's not a great app, but those who download it, tend to use it a lot. So if they favor usage, I could see it increasing substantially.
I'm speculating that the App Store search formula may have been altered by Apple. It's not a great app, but those who download it, tend to use it a lot. So if they favor usage, I could see it increasing substantially.
That's a bit of a stretch since your evidence consists of your experience with one app.
More likely explanation is just random fat chance. Happens once in a while to me too.
I also have an app that got unusually high numbers of sales in the US this past weekend, but I have no idea why. I was thinking maybe it was mentioned somewhere, but I can't find anything. My only other thought is a back-to-school device/app purchase spike of some kind, but I didn't see anything similar around this time last year.
I'm speculating that the App Store search formula may have been altered by Apple.
Speaking of Appstore search:
I have an app, which has "plaza" in the key words, but no other form of it. If I use the words "plaza" or "pláza" or "plázák" (the last two are hungarian words for singular and plural and they appear only in the description), my app shows up in the search results.
I have a game that has "multi" in the keywords, but no "multiplayer". The word "multiplayer" isn't in the description either (I changed that now to be sure).
If I search for the words "multi" and "tank" my app shows up in the results, but it doesn't if I search for the words "multiplayer" and "tank".
So, in one case it finds the app with words slightly similar to the keyword (apostrophes and additional letters), but it doesn't find it if only the half of the word is in the keywords.
I don't know if the description is taken into consideration for search results, but I believe, they took that out, since everybody listed best selling apps in their descriptions totally unrelated.
My point is, that for me it is absolutely incomprehensible, how searching works.
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Last edited by Promo Dispenser; 08-15-2011 at 11:51 AM.
Interesting. Actually, some substrings of my keywords return my app (even if the search term isn't actually a word). It seems the substring must actually start at the beginning of the word (eg, if a keyword is 'multiplayer', you can search on 'multi' but not 'tiplayer'.
Not sure how that leads to 'plaza' vs 'plázák', but I'd be willing to bet that the search algorithm converts any letters with accents in them to something else. (á -> a). Then again, if I search on a keyword I have but make the search term plural, it doesn't show up.
Seems though that if you're deciding on keywords, you go for the plural version always and hope that the itunes search will match on the substring? So if you want 'explosion' and 'explosions' in your keywords, go with the plural.
And here we go again with apple. Those guys can't do anything right
I mean, I could add at least 20 other words to my keywords. How should you manage it with 100 characters (even less, because "," takes them away).
In my case I could even double it again, because I would need the same keywords for two languages, becasue people in hungary may use english and hungarian words for searching, but I can't add hungarian as a separate language to the appstore, even if there is a hungarian appstore.
I know that this is not the prettiest app on the planet. One of the reasons I've been asking about paying for graphics, is that this is the result when I'm working on my own with GIMP.
It gets 40 to 60 downloads a weekday. About 80 on both Saturday and Sunday. It usually gets a bump on the weekend. But this weekend, I was looking at 122 and 135 downloads. Almost all of the increase came from the United States.
I'm not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth. But I'm trying to figure out why. I haven't done an update in a little while and while I did receive a review, it was 4 stars. Hardly something that generates a 50% increase in downloads.
I'm speculating that the App Store search formula may have been altered by Apple. It's not a great app, but those who download it, tend to use it a lot. So if they favor usage, I could see it increasing substantially.
You are right, I got a 30% download increase this weekend. Sunday was my best day.
I'm still trying to figure out this one...Nine month old game goes from 20-40 downloads a day to 150-200. U.S./Canada/UK spike mostly. Other versions of the game(ipad/free) had no jump. In-app purchases went up with the downloads so they seem to be legit downloads.
I'm guessing a review came out but I can't find it. Would really like to know what happened. No marketing I have done in the past has caused any spike like this. Its not a lot of downloads for a free program, but it kills me not knowing what caused it
Tanks and Turrets - was my first attempt at a tower defense, not that great but has had 100k+ downloads
Unexplained increase in sales this weekend
Linear Mode
