An article today about Seeking Fame in Apples Sea of Apps (1.5 billion downloads) mentions some of the "tricks" devs are using, including Digital Chocolate, near the end of the article. I know we here all pretty much are wise to most of these, but I didn't know about "Barnacle Marketing". http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124761263919341941.html
This is actually pretty common in web search. So what companies will do is spread competitor names or abbreviations throughout their web sites and over time, it will get picked up in natural search. The usage of the tactic on iTunes isn't unexpected and is probably more effective because it's a smaller scope. Of course, if you're too blatant on the web, search engines will block you out, and my guess is that Apple is not using anything too sophisticated for iTunes search.
Thanks for the schooling me, I'm learning a lot fast! I Didn't realize all the shananagan's. Amazing how the whole industry is evolving so fast, even new terminology that didn't exist a year ago, just due to the iPhone: Rail System; Tap Shooter; and I feel the next one will be "cockpit" for games utilizing the digital compass/magnometer with just up/down/90degree swivel instead of a cumbersome whole 360degree game usage, imho. Guess I'm gonna do my own right now and add a link to this thread to my harsh response to 8lbs Gorilla's dev's comment in another thread regarding needing more sales to quantify/justify doing an update with a leaderboard
There are all sorts of tricks. In the beginning some companies, which I'm not going to name, added white spaces to their games, for instance "__ Our crap game". This was to get first in the alphabetical listings. Another common thing is to name the crap games something that starts with an 'a': "A crap game". This was to get first in the alphabetical listings. What used to be common, and still is I guess, is to name drop other companies games in the app description, like "If you like games such as Touchgrind, Peggle, DrawRace etc, you will love Our crap game!". When you did a search for "Touchgrind", which isn't even an English word (we made it up), you would still find the following (and I'm not affraid to name drop a few examples): Ski Jump, Webtopia, Amazing X-Ray FX2, iPlummet, Food Additives, 3D Space Flight, 3D Rag Doll Physics, 101 Burps, Ultimate Hold'em Poker, Baby Babble, Symbolism, Crate Maze, Dog Annoy, Animated Crazy Smileys, Hi-Lo, KungFu FX, Colorblind, iCanSketchIt, Party Trampoline, Knights Run, Are we related? - DNA Analysis, iBling, Ride It Out Poker, Triple Card Poker, Beer Finder, Bilobi, iSnot, Phased Array Beamformer, Ex-Wife Toss, A crossword solver, Love Tap, Crazy 4 Card Poker. Phew, and that was for Touchgrind alone. That was from my last search.
Wow, I see that so much, and had no idea! I thought this thread would be informative (and possibly removed for being maybe not relevant), but its something what I learned in just a couple hours from fellow members!! Thanks!!
It really frustrates me when I see apps in categories they shouldn't be in. I wish Apple would crack down on that.
