Your Application, Robin-The Siri Challenger, Suspended from Google Play Store

What are the chances of having 12 new users comment on same thread? What are the chances of almost 50% of comments on a thread from new users?

This post reeks of spam and mod should consider reviewing and if appropriate delete it so that it doesn't show up in search results in future.

These new commenters are Robin users who we asked to make their voices heard and say how they feel about Robin - after all they have a stake in this matter as well and deserve to participate in the discussion. They were loyal enough to go through the trouble of creating HN accounts to be able to comment.

Now, let me ask you: where is all this negativity coming from? Why are you so quick to jump to accusations, and by what right ?

Being spammy and dishonest is not going to be welcome in any community, whether it's Google Play or Hacker News. You were accused of acting in exactly the way you admit to have acted.

There's no "algorithm that shot you down", a human reviewer took you to task for violating their published keyword spam policy. Putting popular competitors' names in your app's name so that you come up when someone searches for them is spammy.

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

> Your app's title shouldn't use other products' branding or names at the start of your app title without permission.

Remove Siri from your app's name and resubmit it. Hope that you got enough of a userbase from the time you appropriated Apple's trademark for keyword traffic to climb back onto the charts on your own merits. Yes, you'll lose the reviews and download counts accumulated from that spam.

To add to the discussion, and to dangrossman's analysis:

I offer the following recommendations. You should do these before considering any re-submission of your app:

1. I took a look at a cached version of your app's page. I recommend removing all references to all competitor's products. As an example, copy like this needs to be removed entirely:

"Compare to voice assistants and chatbots such as Siri, Nuance, Dragon, Vlingo, Evi, Voice, VoiceSearch, SpeaktoIt Assistant, Skyvi and Google Now, as well as GPS navigation such as Waze, Scout, MapQuest, Navigon, Garmin, TomTom, MotionX, Yelp, etc."

This is in violation of Google's keyword spam policy, as you are using references to, "popular search terms and competitor apps."

2. Remove all user reviews from your app's description section. For example, you need to remove the following line:

"Users say: 'After trying S-Voice, Assistant, Skyvi or Hound ...Robin is the best voice app of its kind; clearly the best choice for drivers in need of information on the road.'"

This violates the section of the policy that states: "Please do not include user testimonials in your app description. They tend to be dubious and are frequently utilized to include references to popular search terms and competitor apps in violation of the policies outlined here. Let your users speak for themselves via Play's comment review system."

3. Remove all references to competitor apps in your actual app. For example, I see on the cached page that you have a reference to Siri in one of the screen images (e.g., the image that says, "Why don't you ask Siri?")

4. I checked out your website. Again, I recommend removing all references to competitor's apps. For example, you directly compare your product to Siri on the following page, and use that product's name at least 5 times: http://robingets.me/robinlabs/html/technology.html . I recommend that you avoid this. Instead, the copy should position your technology to stand on the merit and strength of what it has to offer, in its own right.

Best of luck.

We did not appropriate Apple's brand. Had that been the case, Apple would have sued us long ago. Siri as simply become synonymous with voice apps, it's a simple way to communicate the app's purpose to users.

You can bluster about the reason being unfair if you want, but someone explained it to you and it seems to pretty obviously apply to your case and it did the exact thing that spam is supposed to do (have your app show up when someone searches for 'Siri')

I'm not sure why you think that this is unfair.

We are not really a Siri competitor because there is no Siri on Google Play. So when people look for 'Siri' there, what they are in fact looking for are apps like Robin. is this not to their benefit then? Plus, had Google just warned us about this and asked to change the description, we would have complied. Isn't this what the term "disproportionate force" stands for?

How's that argument work for the other 18 competing Android apps and brands you also listed in your description? When someone types in Waze, they're looking for Waze, not Robin. It's Google's marketplace. You gamed it and got downloads and reviews you wouldn't have otherwise. They took those away, nothing more: you were invited to resubmit the app with the policy violations removed. That's a fair response, not that Google is required to be fair.

Many people use Robin in combination with Waze - it makes the experience better. Not a competitive situation at all.

Seems fairly obvious what to do:

"REASON FOR SUSPENSION: Violation of the spam provisions of the Content Policy. Please refer to the keyword spam policy help article for more information... If your developer account is still in good standing, you may revise and upload a policy compliant version of this application as a new package name. "

Not really sure what else to tell you beyond what Google has already told you...

It is not clear to us at all how we violated the policy. Even if we did, unwittingly, the proper way is to notify us with a warning and give us a chance to correct things (what things?) before shooting the app down. At this point, there is no way we can fix anything: everything is gone!

That's odd - usually it's just disabled. Had you received complaints in the past?

To wit: I'd guess you have Siri in the name. Remove it. Easy.

Again, we cannot just remove it now, lost all control of the app profile.

BTW, that's been the name for 3 years.

Breaking the rules for 3 years and not being caught or asked to remove "Siri" from the name doesn't mean it wasn't breaking the rules.

Remove "Siri" and resubmit.

In conclusion to the story, Robin is back on Google Play! Thanks to everybody who contributed to the discussion. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magnifis.p...

Appeal, tell them you understand why they suspended you (mentioning a competitor in your app's title), and tell them that you'll immediately take it out.

Google doesn't typically kill developer accounts after a first suspension so I suspect you've had this happen before.

We have not had this happen before, but out dev account is still alive. Thanks for the tip!

The way Google treats developers is outrageous

If you're not able to find the Google link they're referring to:

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

Most importantly, don't feel bad. It's easy to unknowingly do this.

So ridiculous, google's play store rules have become harder to understand than apple's app store.