Questions on Key Words of App Search

Hi All,


We developed an app to help people find jobs. And we used to use key word "recruiting" to help app store users to find our app. However, recently, our team found that when users search "recruiting" in app store, our app is not listed under the search results. We are wondering are we violating any regulation so that our app are invisible under this key word? What kind of regulations can we refer to so that we can avoid such violations in the future? Thank you!


Emily

Replies

(a) Remember that it is not uncommon for Apple to remove certain keywords from an app's meta data (I doubt that applies in your case) and (b) just because you can't find your app in search results doesn't mean it isn't there...could be it's so far down you just can't uncover it.


As for keyword 'violations', I'd suggest you start from the premise that Apple does it's best to protect certain brands, but in the example of 'recruiting', there are a couple of keyword basics you may want to keep in mind.


1) Don't waste the limited amount of characters afforded the dev... recruit is enough vs. the longer string recruiting - the search engine will start building hits on the first character, and by the time a user enters the second r, that list is already longer than the avg. user is going to bother with. The longer string recruiting is going to hurt your chances, not help. Other examples: dog vs. doggy; fish vs. fishing; discover vs. discoverable; malleable vs. malleability; friend vs. friends vs. friendly vs. friendship; walk vs. walker vs. walking vs. walkabout vs. walkability.


2.) recruit(ing) is going to be so common that you need to take additional and specific action that leads users to your app above the rest. Don't casually assume that you don't have competition. That additional action means one thing...branding. Branding means marketing. Marketing means more than just uploading an app to the store and hoping it will stand on it's own.


Note your question seems off topic for search ads forum.