Revealed: How do APP ranking companies operate? How do APPs manipulate the rankings?

The world's top ranking companies, please contact Qinggua Media: //www.opp2.com/8854.html

On May 9, it was reported that the number of downloads from the Apple App Store is about to exceed 50 billion. However, statistics show that 40 % of the top free apps in Apple’s China region are manipulated. In fact, it has long been a well-known secret in the industry that the top 100 Apple app rankings have always been occupied by ranking-manipulating companies. In recent days, several ranking companies have openly staged a vicious battle to seize the rankings on the APP platform in order to grab territory and occupy positions. At one point, the top 50 rankings on the APP free rankings were "locked" for several days, and other applications could not squeeze into the rankings at all.

The APP free ranking list has always been the main reference data for Apple users to download apps. However, if I tell you that most of the top 100 apps on this list are full of water, and all the downloads and reviews are unreliable, what would you think? Mr. Yu, the CEO of a game company, once spent more than 20,000 yuan to let his game hover at the 100th position on the list for a week:

[The top 100 people get 3,000 yuan a day, mainly because the rankings are manipulated seriously in China. For example, if all the people in the top 100 are manipulated, then no matter how good your product is, no one will know about it, because they are all cheating, and you cannot get on the list if you don’t cheat. 】

After a week, Mr. Yu felt that this list was too expensive, and that being on the list did not produce the expected effect, so he eventually chose to quit. As soon as he stopped brushing the list, his game was quickly removed from the list and disappeared. Although Mr. Yu did not gain much benefit from this ranking manipulation, one of his friends who worked on social software quickly got a venture capital by manipulating the rankings:

[If some social applications have too few users, venture capitalists will not be interested. At that time, the company was running out of money, and then it gained a certain number of users to attract investment . 】

Like them, countless APP software developers, after understanding the unspoken rules of ranking manipulation, begin to pour money into the pockets of ranking manipulation companies. For example, Renren Games, which was previously found to have violated regulations by Apple, was revealed to have spent up to 3 million yuan per month on APP ranking manipulation.

How do the ranking manipulation companies operate? The reporter found that there are indeed many merchants engaged in ranking manipulation on Taobao , and they also clearly mark the prices for various ranking requirements. One store owner said that as long as they are willing to pay, no matter how many barriers Apple sets, they will find a way to get on the list :

[Because Apple has changed the algorithm now, we have to do manual operations here. We are the Internet water army, organizing a large number of people, and paying them a certain amount of money after they download. Everyone in this industry has increased their earnings. For the top 50, I tell you it will be around 5,000 to 6,000. After you reach the top, we will charge you extra for maintenance because while you are making the push, other companies are also making the push and there is a lot of competition. You can imagine that there are only these few in the top ten. 】

It is this large-scale group of water armies that disrupted the fairness of the entire APP rankings and made Apple's closed application empire no longer impregnable. Yan Xiaojia, senior analyst at Analysys International, believes that ranking manipulation is a phenomenon that is very unique to China. Faced with this phenomenon, Apple, as a giant, seems to be somewhat uncomfortable with the local environment and has lost its former dominance:

[It has been fighting against China's hidden rules of botching the charts, but China's inventions and creations are too powerful. The devil has always been one step ahead of the good. This cycle has been going on for several years, including last year when Apple changed its ranking algorithm , but soon the botching companies came up with new methods to botch the charts. The scale of some of these companies that manipulate the rankings is even larger than that of some Internet companies, and some of them can definitely earn tens of millions in a month. 】

The huge profits have made the ranking companies everywhere, including Taobao sales, Weibo attention, Android rankings, and Dianping reviews. Yan Xiaojia said that in short, wherever there is a ranking in China, there are water armies. He believes that the main reason why this group is so rampant is that there is no relevant supervision and restriction at present, while in foreign countries, some ranking manipulation behaviors will be punished with heavy fines:

[For example, whether it can be elevated to the level of supervision by laws and regulations? First of all, it should be supervised by technical means, such as blocking IP addresses and tracing the source. Internet access must be done with real names. The companies that manipulate the rankings are all companies. Is your broadband fiber optic cable registered with real names? Whatever you do online, there will be traces as long as you are online. Is the Internet water army illegal? Does the law define it? Once you define it as illegal from a legal perspective, this problem will be easily solved. 】

According to relevant persons from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecommunication Research Institute, the technologies and policies related to APP supervision are currently under study. Once the relevant plans are introduced, the current phenomenon of ranking manipulation will be curbed.

If you want to cheat on the rankings, please contact Qinggua Media official