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Comment by tharris0101 | Hacker News Reader

Sort of off-topic and I've harped on this before, but when I search "google maps" in the app store, it's the fifth search result!

As a developer in the App Store, I really hope they do something to fix the abysmal searches in it.

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Agreed! This happens with my own app as well! Apparently the app title, even when an exact match to your search query, is no longer considered important.

If there is one thing Apple truly fails at, it is search.

...don't forget maps. They failed at that too. But I can tell you that it was not necessarily Apple that failed at maps. The same problems I had with Apple maps were there in Magellan GPS and their map and content provider Navteq....which is Apple Maps' map, nav, and data provider.

Ever notice when you were doing the turn-by-turn directions that there is a lag in the marker that leads you to miss or almost miss turns, especially in complex intersections....that lag was a huge issue 8 years ago, as it is today. In all that time, Navteq did very little, it seems, to improve routing, maps, or navigation. I was just using Apple Maps yesterday (I'm a very patient and open minded person that gives several unbiased opportunities) when I was told to go around this very short road segment. Turns out it was probably because the segment it marked as "No Thru Trucks". Those Navteq annoyances are what made Magellan GPS horrible and after who knows how long of doing nothing to improve them, Navteq has brought Apple to its knees.

One of Apple's biggest failings in its Maps, though, was its search. Many many users were reporting that searches would take them to entirely different areas if they weren't worded perfectly.

The Android Market had this same problem in the early days. It was frustrating but pretty amusing how terrible Google, of all companies, was at getting search right in their app store.

still does. Try searching for something relevant, see where an app with that exact name is placed.

    Example: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=child+books&c=apps

The app named "Child Books" comes after coloring book, Nook, WebMD and many others. It's just that popularity matters MUCH much more than what you actually search for, and it takes days from the moment of getting popular (Google Maps style) to the moment when the algorithms start noticing.

A better way to search for an app called "child books" would be to use quotes around it.[1]

But I agree, Google Play's search can still be improved. Currently a search for GTA vice city [2] places the actual game in third place behind other related apps. These apps are The important thing to note is that both these apps have 100,000+ downloads while the game is <50,000 right now. So the number of downloads is given a higher weight than name (as it should be.) But the actual game should get a better rank than other things. As time goes on and more sites link to the game and more people download it, this will improve.

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=%22child+books%22&... [2]: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=gta+vice+city&c=a...

> Currently a search for GTA vice city [2] places the actual game in third place behind other related apps.

Looks like that's already changed in the last 3 hours. Now shows up in first place for me.

Third place is currently some ripoff scam app, which is another problem. (Is there any way to report clear ripoff/spam apps from the web storefront? Had to into Google Play to report "objectionable content", which was the closest I could find to a fraud report.)

In that case it isn't clear why an app named "child books" should be on top. It's a very generic name.

Right. The reason they can't do that is because people can easily game the system by just naming their apps popular search terms.

It's the same reason simply owning 'thing.com' doesn't make it your rite to be ranked #1 in google for 'thing'.

Granted, but, seriously, Apple has never even feigned search-fu and MS/Bing has a better chance of making search even a competition.

On a side note, and this might titillate you; I am seeing serious cracks in Google's search skills as their other assets lack search or it is rather clunky. Now if Bing just didn't suck so bad, there might even be a challenger.

Same thing happened with Gmail back at the start. I guess it goes to show that web searches are a very specific kind of search, and just because Google is good at that doesn't mean it's good at anything else (relevance on the web is one obvious way it deviates from pretty much anything else you search)

I believe that was a deliberate tweak in response to the throngs of spam apps titling themselves by the key search terms of popular apps -- and the throngs of users complaining when they idiotically bought one of the spam apps instead of the real app.

while that might be true, it's the wrong way to solve the problem.

Not if you like making money on unnecessary purchases.

If only they partnered with a company that was really good at search and maps and could fill in the parts that Apple isn't good at ..

And Apple could monopolize the areas that company wasn't good at yet, like smartphone OSes!

As a developer I couldn't agree more.. the App Store is currently an unmitigated mess.

The best is the Keywords field that cannot be longer than "100 bytes", doesn't validate your character count until you submit the from, is unclear about comma/space separated values, and disregards pluralization.

It isn't off topic to point out that Apple isn't as good at search as Google. Relevant to both maps and app stores.

Maybe Google will come to the rescue.

Their search on the Google Play store isn't that great, though they now have a feature where what they auto-suggest when typing your query is usually what you want (for larger apps like netflix, ebay, etc)

The search of Google Play store is atrocious, much worse than this.

I never had any serious issues with it.

The only problem I have is when I search for something that isn't there. Happens sometimes that what I want simply doesn't exist in their store (like, for example, VLC), and when that happens all of the near-hits come up. If I am thinking about it, that is the correct behavior, but it still strikes me as strange every time it happens. I think the reason for this is that I have become spoiled by usually only searching on the web, and when I search on the web it is very rare that I don't get any desirable results at all. Google's web search has spoiled me.

My best results for search appear when the App Store auto suggests terms that others have entered. So "docs to..." suggests "Documents to Go(r) by DataViz" or something of the sort. I think that Apple could learn a thing or two from Google's search-intent capabilities.

I remember when Android's market had a similarly terrible search for years, which I thought was funnier considering it was Google and all (although I think their usual algorithms don't work nearly as well for apps that don't really have natural links).

I noticed this too and was annoyed by it.

I think this happens due to the way the App Store time-weights many metrics. expect it to be top tomorrow.

That makes sense, but it makes for pretty terrible UX for major app launches like this one.

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