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"That's the closest thing I can find to a "confirmation" that AppGratis was accepting cash in exchange for a higher rank in their app."

This is the core of their business model. I think a better way to explain is more like Groupon for Apps. You get access to their 12M members, but in exchange, you agree to 1) set your app to free for a day or discount heavily for a day and 2) pay AppGratis for the promotion opportunity.

In terms of whether this is "black hat" or not, I think it's not really black hat. It obviously has the same effect as buying a bunch of paid installs via CPI networks, you just get a lot more velocity given the large audience that AppGratis has access to.

In terms of business model justification, you can defend them on the basis that they do the work of finding app developers who make quality apps (note that most of the apps they promote have high ratings) that may not currently be marketed well and they convince them to make it free for one day only. Users love free stuff and obviously based on their downloads and growth, people found a lot of value in the service. The fact that the side benefit of being featured is that you skyrocket in the app store rankings is not AppGratis's fault, that's something Apple can account for in the app store ranking algorithms if they want to (it's their garden after all). This would be no different than an Amazon Gold Box offer that discounts something heavily and that product rises to the top of the "Bestsellers" list for a limited time.

“That's the closest thing I can find to a "confirmation" that AppGratis was accepting cash in exchange for a higher rank in their app.”

For what it’s worth, in a previous HN thread, several users reported having received offers from AppGratis:

“We were told $3 per install or $100k flat rate for 1 day.”[1]

“I was also quoted a flat fee of $100k”[2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5519881

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5519992

Wow, that's quite a fortune they'd be raking in if people are actually paying $100,000 per day for promotion.

I agree with most people that paid app promotions are almost universally bad, but the selective enforcement of trivial guidelines by Apple is still disturbing.

There's no better way to enact complete control over a population than to make sure they're all in violation of at least one of your obscure rules at any given time. Then you can ruin any of them just for looking at you funny, all while hiding behind the guise of "regulations".

The sad part is it's worth it. The app gratis users are crap, but charting gets you lots of highly qualified users, and if your app is decent you will make that money back. This is no different than botting was last year, except the people are presumably real.

One of my friends in the mobile space told me about some app doing this, but I don't know if AppGratis. At least one mobile app was offering a free app of the day and charging thousands of dollars for the placement.

Not my strong area, but I will point out that the rest of the blogger's post is fantasy. If you are correct, then nothing he wrote is right.

- Paid links is not blackhat SEO. Blackhat SEO involves building links though browser exploits and spam & getting referrals from hijacked pages that rank well. Major newspaper brands sell paid links. No one would call them or their customers blackhat. In fact, buying links is considered whitehat SEO.

- Paid results absolutely do not take in to account a user's satisfaction. Google has a list of prohibited types of ad customers some of which is strictly enforced (things that are illegal under federal law) and other parts that are not enforced at all.

- Studies have shown a large % of Google users do not even understand that the top ads are ads. Take a look at it some tip on an older LCD screen with a poor viewing angle and you will notice the pink background color is imperceptible. This is intentional.

- Google's job is not to provide the best results. It is to provide the results that benefit them best. ( http://www.benedelman.org/news/011212-1.html )

I'm not sure who the original author is, but it is a bit disturbing to me that there are people in this industry that have swallowed Google's propaganda in its entirety, and then are applying those concepts to the world at large. Assuming he is not a Google employee, I think he may be in for a shock on how brutal, inconsistent, and cut throat this business is.

> - Paid results absolutely do not take in to account a user's satisfaction.

I think he was referring to how the clicks on your ads are tracked and you have to pay more to get an ad in if it doesn't attract many clicks (and it doesn't place as high, and you may not even be eligible). This is a feature of AdWords advertisements.

E.g. You can say that if someone searches for cheese, then sees your ad you setup for that keyword, then doesn't click, then that ad was not good for them.

Google's write up is here: http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2454010?hl=en > Having a high Quality Score means that our systems think your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad. ... > Higher Quality Scores lead to lower CPCs. That means you pay less per click when your keyword has a higher Quality Score. ... > Higher Quality Scores lead to higher ad positions. That means your ad can show up higher on the page when your keyword has a higher Quality Score.

Couple of points:

Paid links are black hat SEO. If you sell links you should be putting rel="nofollow" on them.

Also Google does do a pretty rigorous job of combatting paid ad spam. They have many ad text and landing page policies designed to weed out sneaky affiliate deals and the like. They also reward advertisers that provide more popular user experiences through their quality score mechanism which is a direct (and very significant) factor in cost per click.

It could be AppGratis was just as rigorous in their evaluation of offers - I also don't think its a very valid analogy nor do I disagree with you generally save for those 2 points.

> If you sell links you should be putting rel="nofollow" on them.

Is there a law that states that you should do that?

Is this 'best practice' without which clients no longer function?

It's one of Google's guidelines. If you buy or sell links without doing that you risk being penalised by Google. Whether or not that matters to you depends on your site/business.

"Paid links is not blackhat SEO"

Of course it is. Blackhat SEO is SEO that violates search engine guidelines. Here's the link that documents that paid links that pass PageRank violate Google's guidelines: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

Paid links are simply ads.

That you happen to rely on links for your rankings and that you can't distinguish between paid links and non-paid links does not make every paid link blackhat SEO. Blackhat implies malice. You'd have to distinguish between a paid link that is an ad versus a paid link that is there just to improve search engine rank.

Good luck with that.

I can see why google has a problem with this but let's face it: short of looking at the books and being present during meetings you'll never know whether a link is:

(a) paid (b) not paid

(c) just an ad (d) an attempt at increasing search engine rank

It's not the same as ads - the guidelines only refers to paid links which pass PageRank (ie. Without nofollow on them).

Doing something to achieve an SEO benefit that is in contravention of the guidelines of the search engine you are optimising for, because you assume you can't or won't be caught (for example because they can't look at your books and weren't present during the meeting where you sold the link) is the definition of black hat SEO.

It may well be the case that Google lacks the ability to enforce certain aspects of their guidelines at some points in time, but as we have seen in the past couple of years when they do figure it out it can be a business closing event for some.

Much better to just follow the guidelines don't you think?

> Apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions, or direct marketing of any kind.

They do a very poor job of enforcing this. Around Christmas about every app I have sent me a "I'm still here!" push notification around that time advertising itself. And every zynga game I've purchased (a habit I've discontinued) does this both for itself and for other zynga games a few times a month.

I'm just wondering why you would allow a game to send notifications in the first place; you were given the choice on first run.

Some games benefit from push notifications as reminders to do something like "feed my dragon or else it will die" or "your free spins are available now". These are integral to the core mechanics of the gameplay vs. a marketing message like "buy some coins for $1.99, on sale now!" or something to that effect.

Waiting by not playing a game is never a "core mechanic" of a game. It's either an excuse for the app to grab your attention (play now to get a bonus) or a way to drive IAP (pay so you don't have to wait).

I'm thinking of something like a Tamogotchi where you need to take action at specified intervals and push notifications would seem like something I would like as a reminder.

In VESPER.5 you play one turn per day for a meditative experience.

To use one Zynga game as an example, it's great to get notifications from Words With Friends when it's my turn to play. The "you haven't played with <Facebook friend>! Start a game?" notifications, not so much.

Definitely makes sense for multi-player games. I had Draw Something sending me notifications for a brief time now that I think about it, until I got bored with it.

I guess that shows the importance of the policy in question, to provide an disincentive for companies to abuse the privilege. I'm not sure if that applies in this case however, when marketing-driven notifications are actually desired by the users.

Basically, Apple needs a "this notification is spam" reporter.

Sounds like AppGratis showed apps in a way that was completely different from the App Store. The App Store provides an immense pile of crap, which is in front of another immense pile of crap, and...repeat. You get the idea.

AppGratis shows a small number of apps each day and says here -- look at these -- I think they are good.

Some subset gets there because the developer pays, but my impression is that most do not.

Users wouldn't keep looking at AppGratis if everything was crap. There's a balance to be had.

On 5.6 -- if AppGratis sends ONE notification each day that says "new things to look at", is that advertising, promotion, or direct marketing? How is that different from any other news item push?

I think Apple was disturbed by the effect AppGratis could have on their charting system.

> That's the closest thing I can find to a "confirmation" that AppGratis was accepting cash in exchange for a higher rank in their app.

AppGratis is doing a CPI (cost-per-install) business. They make an arrangement with developers where they reduce the price of their app to 0 for a day and in return AppGratis will deliver a certain number of installs for an agreed-upon price.

App developers like this because it is a form of promotion for their app, it increases their chart ranking, and the next day they put the price back on their app and continue to get lots of installs via an increased ranking. There are also numerous opportunities to monetize those free users from in-app payments.

This whole thing differs from normal advertising in that apps like AppGratis drive a ton of installs in a very short amount of time. TapJoy ran afoul of Apple awhile back for similar types of practices.

What makes you think AppGratis offered to remove the push feature? It would drastically cut down their marketing power from everyone who has the app installed and accepted push to only people who happen to open the app each day.

But that would at least make it appear that Apple was trying.

> Seems a little odd. Does Apple ever give official responses on these issues?

Does there need to be one? They're incredibly annoying, especially when high-profile apps get away with them.