New ranking algorithm on the App Store?

hahaha... that was funny I hope that happened too, we are noticing falls and jumps for "2012 Zombies Vs Aliens". I doubt if there is a server crash, they should have redundancy build into the system. But, hey, who knows... stuff happens

 

Weee!

Fun while it lasted

 

Congratulations on 1M downloads!

I don't think sales were down enough to affect things for Spazzle Free. It seems obvious that Spazzle Free was bumped up the rankings by the same changes in the ranking algorithm that bumped up some free apps. I think this is because you have a huge number of downloads over a long period of time and the algorithm 'glitch' gave more weighting to these as compared to your 3-day average sales. Check your ranking again after the witching hour and see if it bumps back up to the 30s. Or maybe everything is back to normal now.

 

Yes, things appear to be back to normal. This "event" looks likely to have been a ranking test by Apple. Normally when the "glitches" occur rankings are just frozen in place... This had a definite, measurable effect that was proven by M of IMAK when he switched his lite app to paid in order to test our theory. It did exactly as predicted by our theory, showing up high in his category even with zero paid sales.

Ok, everyone in IT surely knows that trouble usually doesn't disappear like magic on a Friday afternoon with the flick of a switch. But a test algorithm with a bad outcome can be turned off just like that if the boss says "undo".

Anyway we'll never know for sure. But we still learned something from this:

1) Apple has, can, and will pull the rug out from under us at any given time, without warning. "Tricks" or features you have counted on to assist you may be invalidated at a whim. They have done this before and will do it again. Fortunately this was not permanent, for all the chaos it would bring as the obvious exploits were used.
2) This forum and the people in it can work together more quickly and cooperatively to determine the nature of a change than anyplace else I monitor. iPhoneDevSDK has definitely gone downhill. People were stumbling around on Google and eventually finding this forum as the best info source.
3) In the process of this we've learned some things about paid versus free downloads of some middle to high end selling apps and games. Again, many thanks to those who shared figures here selflessly.

Between this and Developer/App Store survey Apple had me take recently I think bigger changes are coming. When they fall on us unexpectedly, I'll be coming here to work out the details of what happened with you guys and girls

PS- Anyone else here get to take that survey? I haven't found anyone who has yet.

 

Great synopsis!

I also couldn't agree more with your point about iPhoneDevSDK turning into a giant pile of poo. Still some great old threads and info on there, but the site is swamped with angry ESL kids that want everything given to them.

 

This is the first I've heard of it. What were the questions focused on?

 

Nobody I know has taken it yet (other than myself). I am wondering if it was offered to me because I was one of the original 4,000 people accepted into the developer program when the SDK was originally announced. Others were only able to download the SDK and use the simulator until after the app store went live if you recall. Or maybe they just picked random, cranky, opinionated developers to send it to?

The survey focused on the developer program and app store experience. What you like or dislike about aspects of it, what can be done to make things better, and so on. It's supposed to be a roughly 15 minute survey, but I spent over an hour on it! Basically, every page that had a text entry area that allowed you to offer your opinions and suggestions (rather than simple checkboxes and ratings) on I unloaded a small truckload of text into.

This is what makes me believe things like this week's ranking dance are more than coincidental... soliciting developer opinions on the app store and visibility within it means they realize things need to change.

 

New Paid-to-Free-to-Paid test with HodgePodge 9-in-one

For the record, we are still keeping That Ain't It! MJ Trivia paid and it has dropped from #74 to #99 in Music Games Paid. Total US paid sales were 8 on Thurs and 4 on Fri, and of course 0 for all other days since it's been on the store. Does anyone have a normally paid Music Game at the bottom of the top 100 list who can shed some light on the minimum daily sales average it takes to get onto the top 100 list in music games?

I also started a separate test with our 9-in-one utility app, HodgePodge. It has been a paid app and we just made it free to see if I can repeat nattylux's Hippo test. US free sales were 355 yesterday (paid sales have been under 50 since it was released - a little disappointing since we spent 4 months on the app, but oh well, we haven't given up yet). Top app charts says HodgePodge is #87 in free utilities, but I can't verify this because the App Store rankings are down for me. I'll continue to post sales for HodgePodge while it's moving around in the top 100.

 

I was also one of the original 4,000 people accepted into the developer program, and I took the survey. I know a ton of people, and nobody else I know received the survey. It seems the survey was limited to a very few developers, and I don't know how they decided. I know others that were part of the original 4000, and they didn't receive a survey.

 

Very interesting, only a subset of the original 4,000 developers are getting this. I guess we should be honored to be picked to represent the thoughts of so many of us

Did you get as in depth as I did with your responses? I noticed that as you answered questions a certain way they would request more info from you based on the responses you gave. If you identified visibility in the app store as a major concern (as I did), you received a nice text box to give your thoughts on it and how to improve it!

 

I thought I remembered seeing that survey email... I went back and looked and I did indeed get one a few days ago that I ignored.

I have 2 entities. 1 entity is part of the original 4000 developers and launched an app when the app store launched. 1 of the original 400 apps . That entity did not get a request for the survey.

Donoma Games, created early 2009 did get the survey. No idea how they are selecting the names. I did attend the tech talks this year with Donoma Games.

I went as in-depth as I can without writing a full article. T

 

I was not one of the original 4000 developers, but I received the survey request..

 

Great, there's at least four of us from around here (2 of the original 4,000 and 2 that were not) that can try to hammer the visibility issues home to Apple then! It actually gives me some hope that they will be personally reading and reviewing all the responses since it was such a limited survey. If they'd sent it to 100,000 developers any useful feedback may have been lost or forgotten in the sea of responses

As I said earlier, the survey makes me think they are actually trying to listen and make some changes. Let's hope that those changes are more beneficial than the fun stuff we dealt with this week

 

I don't know if everything is really "back to normal". In the past 3 days sales for "The Creeps!" have continually gone up each day, yet it's rank has been dropping each day. Even if my sales were exactly the same each day I would expect a little fluctuation in rank, but ranking dropping while sales increase continually for three days straight?? Seems like something is still broken in the app store.

 

The behavior you are seeing is most likely due to one of the following reasons:
1) "reverting back to normal" - this is probably true if The Creeps! had an increase in ranking during the glitch.
2) "sales vs. percent sales" - it's really your sales as a percent of all sales that determines your ranking, so if apps around your rank had a larger increase in sales over the last 3 days, then you will still move down.
3) "delay" - the sweet spot in the algorithm is 3-day average, so if your sales went down for 3 days and then up for 3 days, there's going to be a delay before your ranking is affected. If this is affecting you, your ranking will likely go up today.

 

I got one!

 

Looks like the surveys are slowly rolling out to devs, just received one myself. I had just updated an app so don't know if that has anything to do with it.

 

Nah, I just got one too and no recent updates. Probably doing it slowly as to not flood their system.

 

Got one here too, didnt release Manage Your Football Club until the end of April 09, but attended the Tech day in London.