Ask HN: please review my apps search engine: AppsVu | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: please review my apps search engine: AppsVu

appsvu.com

8 pointsnavanit15 comments

Remove the ads. Your goal should be to become the standard way people search for apps. Once you do that the business model is obvious (thanks, Google!): app developers pay for ads on the search result page.

First, focus on search quality (precision/recall). Your results right now are awful. http://iphone.appsvu.com/zynga

I'd expect a list of Zynga apps, not a list of spam websites[1]. If you hadn't posted this on HN I'd suspect your business model were adsense arbitrage.

Once you have a search engine that actually works I'd release free apps for all the platforms, build Android/iPhone/etc optimized websites, and plug the hell out of the service everywhere there are smartphone users.

The question you should be asking yourself is "Why would someone use this rather than the default way of searching for apps?" For the iPhone that means iTunes. What can you do to make it more useful than iTunes? Are better results enough? Are iTunes' results bad?

[1] I looked through the search results again and realize now they aren't links to spam websites. But the fact that I thought they did is a problem. "Mafia Wars 24 Reward Points FREE by Zynga app detail :: 148Apps :: iPhone Application and Game Revie [sic]" reads like spam.

I suggest you build your own database, and not link to 148apps.com.

Interesting. Thanks for your detailed thoughts.

The reasoning behind linking to 148apps and the like was because most app buyers read reviews before making a purchasing decision - so this was meant to help in the use-case, as well as standout above the iTunes search which doesn't have independent reviews.

But, I see where you're coming from and will definitely think about shifting to that track.

That's fine. The reviews should be on your site, not some other site.

Maybe mimic Amazon's review system? Get all the reviews from iTunes and augment them by letting people say helpful/not helpful, and then showing the most helpful highest rated review and the most helpful lowest rated review, etc.

Basically create a landing page for each app and then optimize the )(*!@# out of it.

The reason I think this is the right approach in your case (vs. Google) is because your universe is very contained. There's a single, canonical database of applications you need to index (for iPhone apps). Google has to index the whole web, so creating verticalized sub-products is hard to do without knowing what's important and what isn't.

Google is obviously moving in that direction, with maps, reviews, music, video, etc.

This might be different for Android vs. iPhone. I'm not very familiar with the Android ecosystem.

Honestly I would rather spend my time developing apps rather than a site that shows peoples apps that have been developed already.

Doesn't handle no results very well, it crashes.

Doesn't find apps that exist such as 'kira kira'

1. Whoa! Thanks! Must have introduced that bug a few minutes back while making last minute changes. 2. Working on the index quality - not fully indexed the market/appstore yet.

Thanks!

Crashing is fixed now.

Looks odd when viewed on a large screen.

I'd personal make it 100% width or at least center it.

OK! Thanks - I'm guessing it looks squeezed to the left now.

oops: http://iphone.appsvu.com/broadersheet :)

Thanks. The crashing is fixed now. The index is still young as I validate the idea.

Quality of search results wasn't very high.

Quantity of ads on page was quite high.

Presentation made it difficult to skim the results.

Thanks. With regards to difficulty skimming: Is this because there'a a larger gap between results, or characteristics of the font, ...?

I think the gap helps, actually.

I think it's more just the length and repetitiveness of the links... like if I search for Yelp my first result is:

Yelp by Yelp app Detail :: 148 Apps: iPhone Application and Game Reviews And news.....

Maybe it'd work better if you highlighted the search terms?

Got it. Yes highlighting and trimming long titles should help with that. Thanks.

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