AlbumMixer 1.1
September 22, 2009 at 08:21 PM | categories: iOS | View Comments
AlbumMixer 1.0 has been doing reasonably well - especially considering that Apple still hasn't indexed the keywords, or responded to my inquiries via iTunes Connect. But the feedback from users has been good, and I've fixed a couple of bugs in the new 1.1 release. The release after that, 1.2, will add some fun new features.
Did I mention that the keywords I supplied aren't searchable? The 1.0 keywords were "iPod,album,shuffle,album shuffle,music". But searching for "album shuffle" wouldn't match my app. Searching for "album mixer" would, which implies that Apple is doing some word-splitting on app names - interesting. I was worried about the reference to "iPod", so for 1.1 I changed the keywords to "album,shuffle,random,music". The description isn't supposed to be searchable, but I removed "iPod" from that too. That did something: a few hours after 1.1 went live I was able to find it using "random album".
But searching for "album shuffle" still doesn't work. I suspect that Apple is silently ignoring keywords that match existing app names: there's a "Shuffle" and a "Shuffle!" in the app store. So in 1.2 I'm trying to change the app store name to "Album Mixer - Shuffle by Album", while leaving the display name alone so that it fits on the Springboard icon. I hope that will get the term "shuffle" through the hypothetical keyword filter. We shall see.
Given the lack of app store search keywords, I think most of my traffic so far has been coming from Apple's discussion forums (and Google searches matching those forums). I've been collecting threads there, and posting to them when possible. In no particular order....
Did I mention that the keywords I supplied aren't searchable? The 1.0 keywords were "iPod,album,shuffle,album shuffle,music". But searching for "album shuffle" wouldn't match my app. Searching for "album mixer" would, which implies that Apple is doing some word-splitting on app names - interesting. I was worried about the reference to "iPod", so for 1.1 I changed the keywords to "album,shuffle,random,music". The description isn't supposed to be searchable, but I removed "iPod" from that too. That did something: a few hours after 1.1 went live I was able to find it using "random album".
But searching for "album shuffle" still doesn't work. I suspect that Apple is silently ignoring keywords that match existing app names: there's a "Shuffle" and a "Shuffle!" in the app store. So in 1.2 I'm trying to change the app store name to "Album Mixer - Shuffle by Album", while leaving the display name alone so that it fits on the Springboard icon. I hope that will get the term "shuffle" through the hypothetical keyword filter. We shall see.
Given the lack of app store search keywords, I think most of my traffic so far has been coming from Apple's discussion forums (and Google searches matching those forums). I've been collecting threads there, and posting to them when possible. In no particular order....
- http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10258118
- http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10258114
- http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10195656
- http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10195574
- http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10195570
- http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10195651