Apple's bottom line from cracking down on App ranking manipulation

In the past two days, the news that Apple cracked down on App ranking manipulation has been all over the screen. From Tencent Technology and Appying, we can see that apps and games such as Anjuke, Youmi, Weizai, and Wukong and Diaochan have been severely punished by Apple for ranking manipulation. Some have been demoted to 1,000th place, and some have been directly removed from the shelves. There may be many more ranking manipulations, but they are not so obvious and have not been caught by Apple. The biggest reason why these ranking manipulations were punished is that they touched Apple's bottom line.

What's Apple's bottom line?

No one knows, because this has always been a secret, but from Apple's practices for a long time, Apple is still very humane and is quite kind to the behavior of tampering. This can be seen from Apple's treatment of apps. Since 2010, after some domestic teams learned about Apple's ranking algorithm, they have never stopped tampering with the rankings. Apple may know that everyone wants volume, so it tampered with the rankings. For the sake of fairness, it has to constantly modify its algorithm, once, twice, three times, and now Apple has no idea how many times it has modified the algorithm. Every time Apple modifies the algorithm, it can hardly maintain it for long, and it will be cracked by the awesome Chinese people...

Apple is really patient. Later, Apple began to issue a series of punishments, hoping to deter domestic developers who cheat on the charts. Despite this, Apple's punishment for cheating on the charts is not very severe, because since Apple officially issued the policy, there are still relatively few punished apps. On the one hand, it can be seen that Apple respects the labor results of domestic developers, and on the other hand, it also shows that Apple's tolerance for cheating on the charts is strong enough. However, domestic cheaters are always bold and challenge Apple's bottom line again and again. This time, starting from December 1, Apple has punished cheaters on a large scale, by reducing their rights and removing their apps... These actions show that Apple's official tolerance has reached its limit, and Apple may crack down on cheating on the charts more severely in the future.

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Why do domestic developers like to cheat on the rankings?

On the one hand, it is because we want to quickly gain a large number of users. I used to promote apps, but I never thought about brushing the rankings. Later, I managed to get on the rankings through the addition of new natural users. Since being on the rankings, the number of downloads of the app has been increasing, and we have brought a lot of users. Domestic developers like to brush the rankings because the exposure rate on the rankings is very high, which can help the app gain a lot of users.

On the other hand, the immediate method of manipulating the rankings can reduce the time cost and budget of promotion. Why do I say that? Because if a new app is promoted through natural means, it may take a long time, about two to three years, and a lot of manpower costs will be invested during this period. Most of the domestic app developers want to get rich, especially in a short period of time. The capitalists' mindset makes them do as little as possible in terms of product quality and promotion methods. However, these developers do not understand that creating a well-known app is not so easy. Promoting a well-known app is different from writing code. To develop a product or app, you just need to write more code and work overtime, and a product can be launched quickly, but promotion is not like that. The effect of promotion is often cumulative, and this accumulation takes a long time. For example, Moji Weather, Tiger Map, and Wochacha are basically products that started in 2010. It has accumulated three or four years from development to reaching hundreds of millions of users. Products that have not accumulated time, such as Crazy Guess Picture, Face Meng and other products, basically have a very short survival time, and most of them are short-lived. The method of saving promotion time and labor costs by brushing the rankings will not go far.

Finally, the rankings are manipulated for bosses and investors to report to. After a new app has been online for a while, investors need to see the data. If you want to increase the number of app users and reduce costs in the short term, you can only manipulate the rankings. This large-scale manipulation of the rankings may be because the Spring Festival is approaching, and investors or bosses want to see good data, and internal team members want to get more year-end bonuses and have a good year, so this large-scale manipulation of the rankings has led to this. This also seriously touched Apple's bottom line and caused Apple to punish it on a large scale.

Why would you dare to cheat on the charts in the face of punishment?

On the one hand, many developers who manipulate the charts are lucky. Although there are many developers who manipulate the charts in China, many of them are still very cautious and will not let the app be promoted too quickly, which evades Apple's review. On the other hand, although Apple has severe punishments for manipulation of the charts, these punishments are not very serious. Apple's early punishments are mainly warnings, and there are no more severe measures against developers who manipulate the charts. Therefore, these behaviors have led to some developers who manipulate the charts being fearless. Although some apps have been forced to be removed from the shelves, developers still have many ways to deal with it, such as changing the skin, changing the company, and quickly submitting new apps to the Apple store. These have also made domestic developers' manipulation of the charts continue despite repeated bans.

I think Apple is very clear about this method of manipulating the rankings. Apple has very strict control over its products, both in hardware and software, and does not allow anyone to damage its products. So it should be well aware of the app rankings in the App Store. Apple has not imposed large-scale penalties, perhaps to attract more developers and add more high-quality apps. However, this tolerance is always limited. When the growth rate of high-quality apps decreases and the number of bad apps increases, these will obviously undermine the ranking rules and ecology of the Apple Store, and the punishment for ranking-manipulating apps will also be increased.

Finally, I would like to advise all developers and entrepreneurs to focus on making good products, exploring real user needs, and making high-quality products. At the same time, make long-term plans for promotion, promote in a step-by-step manner, and accumulate a lot of volume. Do not take shortcuts. Taking shortcuts will not create great products and brands. Great products and brands have accumulated more than 10 years of time and user testing.

Link to this article: http://www.cocoachina.com/appstore/20141223/10733.html