If you have a new app idea it will either be copied within weeks (there are over 50 versions of my 'My Last Cigarette' app), it's ideas will be stolen to enhance another app, or it will be killed by a zombie app attack etc etc. Until the store is fixed it is insane to release a good new app idea.

Just some points as I feel they make it clearer for everybody. Please see the app above mine. It has 18 ratings. 3 stars overall. My search ads are showing. They will not work because my retention tells the algorithm that my game is not relevant to the keyword "chess" overall. I spent a lot but am 24th for keyword "chess". I have proof of attacks to kill the rank of my app. My app is an exact match more or less for the keyword "Chess". Even if I am outbid which I will be at times, the other app was abandoned 7 years ago. My app made over $1M in the app store (not a huge amount but not tiny). It now makes next to nothing. There is no way that the 3 star app with 18 ratings has spent over $10,000 and got 18 ratings. It's broken 100%. Totally rigged. Total scam to tell me to spend more money to get above the 3 star app :)

My app is called 'Chess.' and this is the response I got about the Search Ads not working: "We recommend that you gradually adjust your max CPT bids and keywords, as these are the levers that can best help you to reach your performance goals. Assuming your app is relevant for the keyword, it’s possible that there are instances where you're being outbid by other advertisers interested in showing their ad for that same keyword. " My keyword is 'chess' which I would say is a 99% match to an app name of 'Chess.', but I am buried presumably because of these attacks, and not because I don't spend enough on Search Ads.

Has anyone heard anything back from Apple? This is a $1,000,000,000 scam at the very least as developer's are throwing $$$ at Search Ads that will never work, not to mention lost ranking and revenue loss from that.

They could target paid apps I guess, but it would be expensive.

I just checked and this has happened at least 7 times to Chess in just 2 years.

This has been happening to most of my apps for a while but I never picked up on it. My Brain School app has had tonnes of zombie downloads too. Revenue overall has dropped 90%. I've been told Apple won't do anything and to go to the press but I just want to create apps and have a level playing field. For a couple of $1000 you can destroy each of your rivals. Meanwhile search ads is affected too and you will just get "you need to spend more money" responses from Apple Search Ads :( I've wasted a small fortune on them but my app is stuck at 24 below a 3 star app with a handful of ratings when it used to be #1. Apple actually benefit from the scam because you end up throwing a tonne of $$$ at search ads which will never work.

This happened to me the other day. Report it to Apple as fraud. It's a way to destroy your app by killing engagement etc. Here you can see the effect it had on my app.

Did your retention take a hit?

This is a scam IMHO. A rival will buy installs of your app for a chosen keyword to destroy your benchmarks. In turn this will affect your ranking in the store and future success. My app appears to be ruined by these practices. It used to be #1 for it's keyword in most countries, and now it can't even rise above a 3 star app (see pic). My retention dropped from around 30% to 1/2 a %, because the downloads aren't real.

This is a technique used by malicious developers to kill your app. The installs kill your apps' retention values etc and make it rank lower for the keyword used to get the install. I do not know this for fact as there is no way to prove it, but my chess app has been ruined by such spikes eg 2 days ago 11000 downloads from Vietnam when I usually get a few hundred. Apple do seem really interested in investigating. Hopoefully they will remove the bogus units from my stats

Thank you.

I'm trying the "Contact Us" inside Appstoreconnect first with the category of fraud. I haven't had much luck discussing issues in the past tho' - I usually get a reply telling me to do the stuff that I have already said to them that I have done.

There are only two apps in my screenshot. Further up there are quite a few ads.

Did anyone find out how to do this?