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Comment by danial | Hacker News Reader

If you're reading this, I'm so sorry this happened to you, Russ.

The problem is worse than being de-ranked for your keywords. The search is downright broken. Searching for 'predictive weight loss tracker', 'predictive weight tracker', anything with 'tracker' yields no results on my phone. Removing 'tracker' and only searching for 'Predictive Weight' or 'Predictive Weight Loss' gives me only one result: Happy Scale.

It almost seems like they're filtering your app on the 'tracker' keyword. That's not fair!

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It seems like you may be onto something here.

When I query "weight loss tracker", what's interesting is that MyFitnessPal comes in at #4 which has a subtitle of "Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker".

I also get 0 results for "predictive weight loss tracker" even though that matches the app's subtitle. Seems weird.

The Happy Scale app itself does look really well done though. Looking forward to giving it a try.

The number 1 app that comes up for me with the term "weight loss tracker" is called "Monitor Your Weight" and looks significantly less polished than your app. But it uses the term "weight tracker" in the first few words of the app description and not in the subtitle. Your app doesn't use the phrase anywhere in the description that I saw. Maybe subtitles are now ignored for search ranking (due to bug or intentional)?

Nice looking app. You may have gotten a new customer in me.

Thanks for your support! Yes, it specifically seems like anything with the word "tracker" in it got axed. Maybe it's just a glitch?

Maybe change "tracker" to "monitor" until they fix it? I usually search for both when it comes to fitness/diet and it might not be blacklisted.

I do have "monitor" as a keyword, too. The thing about "tracker" that makes it so valuable is that it comes up as predictive text. If you type "weight loss" in the search bar, "weight loss tracker" is suggested, and "weight loss monitor" is not. PS: Thank you for proffering a helpful suggestion!

I just bought your app – looks fantastic! I'm sorry this is how I discovered your app, and hope the issue gets resolved.

Thank you!

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