[dylan604]

It helps to realize that the search is less of a tool for you to find information and more of a tool to show you an ad targeted on your search query. That's why ads are the top results and the organic data you wanted is after the fold. You're asking an ad company for information, and you don't expect an ad as a result? They are only continuing to show the organic results to tease you into coming back..

[zevon]

The original comment was about Apple's App Store. I assume there are financial ways to get your App "featured" there or something like that but as far as I know, you can't financially take direct influence on whatever logic Apple uses to sort search results there. Yet, it can still be spectacularly difficult to find an App - even if you type in its exact name, as indicated by OP (can confirm from my experience).

If you have a theory about what Apple's motivation to actively serve such bad results could be, I'd be interested to hear it. I've always sort of assumed that the root cause for this is some combination of neglect on Apple's part and attempts at gaming the system by developers (I don't know much about developing for the App Store, but I presume there are forms of SEO-like activities that can be done in attempts to bump up your app).

[dylan604]

Most ad sales platforms have auctions for ad slots and/or keywords. If you want to game the system and have money to burn as growth hacking, you can place a larger value in those auctions/keywords to win a chance at your ad being placed in front of more eyeballs. When it comes to apps/games especially, people will chose whatever is posted from laziness, fomo, or just tired of looking and picking the easy route. I suspect that when you get an unrelated ad to your search, it's because someone else was willing to spend more money for those search terms than someone with more relevant matches. It's always going to be about those Benjamins.

[zevon]

I get that it's always be about money in the end but I understand this sub-thread to be a bit more specific: Is there an ad sales platform run by Apple where your Benjamins have influence on the search ranking in the App Store? I and many other people here are not talking about things that are clearly ads (like a "featured" result or the ads shown by google and other search engines).

[chongli]

The App Store is an ad platform [1]. App developers are bidding on those search keywords.

[1] https://ads.apple.com/app-store/best-practices/keywords

[deanishe]

Is Apple really an ad company?

I think it's reasonable to expect better from them.

[fsflover]

They aim to become one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/19/apple-now-directly-sell...

https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/04/10/apple-makes-it-re...

[comprev]

Since Apple take a slice of the App store sale it's in their best interest to "feature" apps which are already popular and bring in good revenue.

Why promote an app with 100 sales over another with 10,000?

[dylan604]

Why do people continue asking this question? Why do people think Apple is not collecting data to serve ads? Do they not remember being asked about it when setting up their devices when the ask if you want to share or not? Have they not seen the privacy options about Apple's ad network? Is it actual ignorance or head in the sand?