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Comment by busymom0 | Hacker News Reader

I am a small developer on iOS and the App Store Search ads are super frustrating. When users search for my exact app name, apple shoves 2 full screen ads on top of the search results. Sometimes, it's 1 search results sandwiched in between 2 ads which makes the user miss it because they scrolled past the ads.

Often these ads are entirely unrelated to what user is searching for. And small developers are being discouraged when big companies are spending millions in ads to rank above them.

Also, most of the times, the ads are for apps I will never download. I constantly see ads for the Temu app which I will never use. Yet, there's no "don't show this ad again" button.

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I've always found it crazy that if you search for a brand name / trademarked name that it's legal for the search provider to shove a bunch of vaguely related shit above the results unless that brand pays for ad placement to be the top result. Sure, fine, put whatever ad pays the most at the top of the search for "best iOS game" - but when someone searches "Wordle" - that you can't rely on Wordle being the top result is a indictment of the whole ad-supported internet. (Sub 'Claude' or 'Discord' or whatever other search term and it's the same issue)

It's worse than that. App names must be unique, but if you search for the exact (unique!) name, the exact hit isn't even rated on top! I have the app "Bit" on the app store and you have to do quite a bit of scrolling, even if you don't count the ads.

Same problem here too. I have a game called "Unscramble!" and it's impossible to find it with that name. I have scrolled for many pages and can't find it. Meanwhile, many very old apps which haven't been updated in many years are showing in the results.

when i am looking for a specific app on the App Store, I never use the app store to search. I search the web and look for a link to it on the app store. Mostly it's faster that way.

As a user this also drives me crazy. I want SERACH RESULTS not a fucking full screen ad or maybe even TWO screens worth. Absolutely shit.

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