The Latest App Store Cheat

Paul Haddad from Tapbots on the latest App Store cheat: SEO-style keyword gaming in the app’s description text. Apple should just kick these developers out of the store — how can this be defended as anything other than cheating?

Update: For exhibit A, check out the app descriptions for every single app in the store by developer Andrew Borland. Each contains this exact paragraph at the end:

Customers who purchased this game also liked:
Enigmo, Bejeweled, Moto Chaser, Super Monkey Ball, Poker, Spore, Ocarina, iHunt, Guitar, Scrabble, Solitaire, Tanzen, iFish, Shazam, Loopt, Tetris, Poker, iBeer, FieldRunners, AIM, Remote, Facebook, Star Wars, Trace, Guitar Rock Tour, Flick Fishing, Touchgrind, wurdle, Night Camera, and Koi Pond.

Not only is this flagrant keyword spam (Borland’s junky-looking apps now show up in the results when you search for the names of the popular apps he lists) but it’s also phrased in a way to make it seem like the list of apps is generated by the App Store’s recommendation engine.

★ Thursday, 18 December 2008