Why doesn't Apple fix this? It seems like no matter how their backend architecture works, they could surely find a way even just to manually whitelist new big name apps from well-known companies to the top of search results.

Why wouldn't they do that?

It's only bad for everyone that instead there's this total shitshow litany of garbage presented to the user instead. It's bad for customers, bad for the app suppliers, and bad for Apple themselves. Totally bizarre.

The problem also occurs when searching for any low-ranking results in the iOS store, regardless of getting the exact name correct. A friend released a crossword game, and when searching the exact name of the app, it still comes up as the seventh result behind one ad and five other (much more popular) crossword apps with different names.

but this is openai we are talking about, you'd think apple would fast track them towards ranking higher at least to not make apple look terrible