Michal Ždanský In early 2012, Apple purchased Chomp, an iOS and Android app for better app search and discovery. This was a feature that Apple sorely lacked in its App Store, its algorithm often did not generate relevant results at all, and Apple was often criticized for this.
The acquisition of Chomp seemed like a logical step for Apple, and a great hope for users and developers who had to use gray practices, such as title and keyword optimization, to get better search positions in the App Store. Now, after more than two years, Chomp co-founder Cathy Edwards is leaving Apple.
According to her LinkedIn profile, she oversaw Apple Maps as Director of Evaluation and Quality. In addition, she was also in charge of the iTunes Store and the App Store. Although she didn't play a key role at Apple, and her departure certainly won't significantly affect the company, it's time to ask how Chomp has helped App Store search and how App Store discovery has changed over that time.
In iOS 6, Apple introduced a new style of displaying search results, called tabs. Thanks to them, users can also see the first screenshot from the application, not just the icon and name of the application, as was the case in earlier versions. Unfortunately, this method is particularly impractical for moving between results, especially on an iPhone, and getting to the end of the list is tiring with hundreds of results.
[do action=”citation”]He who seeks will find. So if it's not looking in the App Store.[/do]
Apple also slightly changed the algorithm several times, which was reflected not only in search, but also in the rankings, which took into account not only the number of downloads and ratings, but also how much users use the application. Currently, Apple is also testing related searches. However, none of these rather minor changes have made a significant improvement in the relevance of the results found, just type in a few common phrases and you'll immediately see how badly the App Store search is doing if you don't enter a specific app name.
For example, the keyword "Twitter" will correctly search as the first official iOS client, but the other results are completely off. It follows Instagram (paradoxically owned by Facebook), another similar app, on Shazam, a desktop background app, an emoticon app, even a client Google+ or a game Table Top Racing it comes before popular third-party Twitter clients (Tweetbot, Echofon).
Want to find the newly introduced Office for iPad? You will also have a problem in the App Store, because you will not come across any applications under the password "Office". And if you go straight for the name? "Microsoft Word" finds the official application as high as 61st. Here, the Google Play App Store is quite crushing, because in the case of Twitter, it really only finds clients for this social network in the first places.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Although Apple is gradually adding new categories to the App Store, in which it manually selects interesting thematic applications, it is still struggling in search even two years after the acquisition of Chomp. Maybe it's time find to acquire another company?
