Apple improves discovery of iPhone apps with keyword-based searching

Written on 8:26 PM by Mujtaba

Apple has enhanced the App Store with the keyword-based search, resulting in an improved app discovery. The change arrives amid frequent complaints from developers and analysts requiring better organization of over 65,000 apps found in the App Store.

Apple is asking developers to provide up to 255 characters of keywords in order to make finding iPhone apps in the App Store easier. Previously, the mobile App Store client would check queries against titles and descriptions, yielding a mixed bag of results.

For example, searching for all Electronic Arts games by typing in the “EA” would’ve also populated the resulting list with non-EA apps that carry the “EA” term in their description. Equally, typing in “Apple” would’ve returned all apps whose description mentions the company. From now on, developers can post custom keywords, alongside binaries, via the iTunes Connect service and update the keywords with the submission of a new binary.

A quick check in the App Store reveals many developers have already done so. For example, searching for “Electronic Arts” now produces EA games first. Equally, typing “Apple” in the search field puts Apple-made programs at the top of the list.

The long-overdue change arrives just days following harsh criticism that Apple’s op-chief Timothy Cook had to endure during earnings call with investors, when Charles Wolf of Needham & Co. said the following:

In some respects, the App Store has taken its place alongside YouTube, where poor taste is the defining metric. More ominously, it has led to a deterioration of the entire pricing structure for iPhone applications. The risk is that developers who hope to build quality applications that have a long shelf life may be discouraged from doing so because prospective development costs exceed the revenues they expect to earn on the applications. In short, this race to the bottom has the potential to degrade the overall equality of the applications sold at the App Store.

Cook rebuffed Wolf’s suggestion that the , hinting that the company is “always looking for ways to categories apps differently,” adding that Apple has “some ideas” in that respect. The rumor-mill has been buzzing about the so-called premium App Store section that would apparently carry only high-quality apps. More that such a store could be built into Apple’s rumored tablet device.

Christian’s Opinion

There’s so much more that Apple can do to make finding apps via the App Store client on the device easier. There’s a notable difference in the filtering features of desktop iTunes and mobile App Store client. For example, desktop iTunes lets you filter apps released by specific publishers or similar items that other people have bought. These filters are found in the bottom right section of the app description page or via a clickable publisher field bellow the app title.

The introduction of the keyword-based search in App Store is first step in the right direction. That said, Apple should add filtering capabilities found in desktop iTunes, namely the aforementioned ability to list all apps by a given publisher and similar apps that others are buying. The ability to show similar apps matching the currently browsed app wouldn’t hurt either. Otherwise, sorting and browsing through tens of thousands of apps found in the App Store will become harder than finding needle in a haystack.

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