Promotion or manipulation? Uncovering the secrets of manipulation of the rankings of trial software

Just tap on your phone to download a few apps and you can earn tens of thousands of yuan a month. Trial software is going viral in the circle of friends. After several days of investigation, Beijing Business Daily reporters found that there are many softwares on the market, including Qianka, Shike Xiaobing, Shiwan Daren, and Money Master, which use the banner of trial to help e-commerce, tourism, food delivery, finance and other types of companies to rank on the App charts. According to the search ranking rules of Apple App Store, more downloads mean higher rankings and more attention among similar apps. Some legal professionals said that this way of swiping the charts is almost equivalent to false propaganda, suspected of misleading and defrauding consumers, but due to the difficulty of obtaining evidence, there is currently no way to protect rights.

Trial App earns tens of thousands per month

Downloading various apps has become Ms. Wang's main way of spending her free time recently. Since September, Ms. Wang has used a trial app called "Trial Soldier" to download nearly 100 apps of various types, including well-known e-commerce platform apps, various travel apps, and financial management apps. It is easy to use and can earn rewards of 0.2-3.5 yuan from the "Trial Soldier" platform in just a few minutes, and it supports WeChat withdrawals. Ms. Wang said that there is no need to try out the above apps at all. Just follow the instructions on the "Trial Soldier" and uninstall the app after 10 minutes of downloading.

According to Ms. Wang, to make money using "Trial Soldier", you first need an iPhone. At the same time, since the "Trial Soldier" App is not yet trusted by the App Store, you need to manually trust it to install it. Afterwards, open the app to start making money, and the system will automatically update the list of apps that users can try out. Each app has a certain number of copies, and each user can only download it once on a first-come, first-served basis. Ms. Wang took the Eastmoney.com App as an example and said that "Trial Soldier" pushed instructions to Ms. Wang on September 6 to try out this App. According to the instructions, Ms. Wang needs to copy the "stock" keyword recommended by the system first and search in the App Store. "Trial Soldier" prompts that the position of this App ranks 9th. Ms. Wang finds the Eastmoney.com App in the corresponding position and completes the download. Then she opens the App and waits for about 10 minutes. The "Trial Soldier" platform automatically transfers a 2 yuan trial fee to Ms. Wang's account. After the trial, Ms. Wang deletes the App.

Ms. Wang told the reporter that the "Tester Soldier" platform pushes apps that need to be tried out at various times every day, especially at 3 or 4 p.m., when the most app categories and copies are updated, and the corresponding trial fees can be higher. It is reported that Ms. Wang's income has reached 184 yuan, and she has successfully withdrawn 120 yuan to her WeChat account. A Beijing Business Daily reporter logged into the "Tester Soldier" platform and found that a user named "Dandan" on the platform earned 1,167 yuan on September 19, and received 23,506 yuan in trial fees from September 1 to 19, ranking first in the income ranking.

Promotion or manipulation?

The trial method of deleting the app after downloading is quite interesting. There are many users like Ms. Wang. Another Mr. Wu is engaged in car sales business. Trying out an app to earn some pocket money is one of his ways to kill time. In Mr. Wu's opinion, such a trial is basically equivalent to brushing the rankings for the app. After downloading and manually trusting and installing the "Trial Soldier" App, the Beijing Business Daily reporter found that the WeChat public account responsible for notifying and issuing rewards to users is called "App Trial". The account owner is Beijing Duodian Technology Co., Ltd. The official information in the App shows that "Trial is the most influential iOS advertising platform and the most influential search traffic distribution channel in the industry. It has served more than 1,000 companies and has thousands of ranking experiences. It serves day and night. As of July 2016, Trial has a total of about 26 million fans, including more than 500,000 daily active users, more than 500,000 daily new users, and a single application. The maximum daily distribution volume is about 300,000 or more, and the cumulative application distribution volume has reached more than 100 million."

Is it an advertising promotion platform or an App that merchants use to swipe the rankings? A Beijing Business Daily reporter called the customer service number of the WeChat official account, but it showed that the phone had been suspended and the relevant customer service staff could not connect. Subsequently, the Beijing Business Daily reporter called several companies on the "Trial Soldier" trial list to understand the situation, but no company responded as of press time. A relevant person in charge of a well-known e-commerce platform who did not want to be named revealed to the Beijing Business Daily reporter that the platform had cooperated with "App Trial" to "beat the rankings". The specific cooperation fee was unknown, but because the App Trial was bound to WeChat and the number of users who downloaded the above-mentioned e-commerce App was large, the cooperation between the two parties was quite good. According to the person who did not want to be named, the cooperation fee is not convenient to disclose, but there have been rumors in the industry that the cost of users obtained by e-commerce platforms through trial apps is about 20-30 yuan per person. When promoting or conducting specific activities, they will cooperate with companies such as "App Trial" to brush the rankings for the platform, bring some new users and increase the number of users.

The chaos has existed for a long time

The phenomenon of App ranking manipulation has a long history. "Rank manipulation" has always been considered to be a practice in the App Store of Apple's iOS platform to use some abnormal means to quickly obtain sales and downloads, enter the app rankings, and thus gain wide exposure, downloads and sales. Before the initial popularity of ranking manipulation, when a new app was launched, its developers would generally invite friends in their social circles to download and comment on it to increase the exposure and downloads of the app. Since the current App Store rankings can only display the top 200 apps, many people have captured the business opportunities therein.

Ye Zhirong, an Internet business consultant and chief knowledge officer of Yibang Power Network, told reporters that the main reasons for App ranking manipulation are to obtain investment, boost stock prices and develop users. Previously, many developers could get tens of millions of yuan in financing by manipulating the rankings for one or two months, and it only cost hundreds of thousands of yuan to do so. Countless entrepreneurs dream of their products becoming popular overnight and quickly gaining the favor of capital. The profit-driven trend has led to increasingly crazy application developers, thus forming a vicious cycle of ranking manipulation. If you are on the list today, you may be knocked down by your peers tomorrow. It is far from possible to maintain your position on the list through real downloads by normal users and the application product itself, resulting in the biggest beneficiaries of the mobile Internet being those ranking manipulation companies that profit from one profit game after another.

In order to curb the phenomenon of App Store ranking manipulation, Apple has also taken corresponding punishment measures. Beijing Business Daily reporters learned that in May this year, the rankings of the App Store free list and paid list experienced a rare major shock, with more than 50 applications falling sharply, and many game apps were even removed from the shelves. In addition to the punishment, Apple has also made multiple revisions to the App Store algorithm. However, this has not stopped users and merchants with ulterior motives from manipulating the rankings. With the popularity of WeChat red envelopes, some platforms have linked red envelope assistants with apps. Users who want to grab a designated red envelope must download a certain app to achieve the purpose of manipulating the rankings.

Suspected of misleading consumers

Although on the surface, App ranking manipulation does not have much impact on consumers, Zhao Zhanling, a special researcher at the China E-Commerce Research Center and a well-known IT lawyer, believes that such behavior is suspected of false advertising against Apps and misleading or defrauding consumers. If losses are caused, the ranking manipulation platform will bear legal responsibility. However, Zhao Zhanling said that the fraud and misleading of consumers caused by the above false propaganda are relatively hidden, and it is difficult for consumers to retain evidence and obtain evidence after being misled. If consumers suffer corresponding losses as a result, they will inevitably face a situation where they have no way to complain and their rights protection is fruitless.

In addition to defrauding and misleading consumers, ranking manipulation has many disadvantages for the development of the Internet industry, including disrupting the market, which not only makes high-quality companies and products unacceptable to consumers, but also causes many counterfeit products to become popular. Beijing Business Daily reporters learned that those who are serious about making products are overwhelmed by ranking manipulation products before they have time to directly face users. Previously, Wang Pengfei, CEO of Lingdong Kuaipai, which focuses on QR code scanning, revealed that Lingdong Kuaipai was a victim of ranking manipulation. Lingdong Kuaipai's App was ranked around 15th in the tool category list before, and then dropped a lot, because there were two other tool apps that were manipulating the list.

In Ye Zhirong's view, strengthening supervision and making the illegal costs of bad companies higher is one of the ways to improve the current situation of the App ranking-boosting market. Ye Zhirong said that when the cost of ranking-boosting is high and the input of ranking-boosting companies is higher than the output, such ranking-boosting will not be sustainable. At the same time, with the development of enterprises, word of mouth and brand image will become more and more important to the enterprises themselves, which will also increase the illegal costs of enterprises in disguise. Compared with increasing exposure by ranking-boosting and submitting perfect performance reports to capital parties, brand image is undoubtedly more important.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.