You trying to get blood from a stone here. Google cares for your problems in only the most indirect of manners, so bitching is not really going to help. It is the reality, you are going to have to deal with it. But the thing is, it is a fairly level playing field. Everyone else in the store is dealing with the same thing, more or less. So work with it, not against it. Look for conversions that come from things other than search. Throw a (Shopping List) at the end of your name since that seems to be the main factor in search.
My bigger question is how is a $5 app that #2 in its category for paid apps struggling to be profitable (especially since I believe the top paid list are counted by installs)? All of your complaints seem to be about competing with other apps, but you seem to be mostly winning that competition. Are Android app sales so low that #2 in its category app is unprofitable?
The difference is that our Unlocker is #2 in the paid category, but our main application is basically off the charts. Almost all of our sales come from the free application -> Users who use Out of Milk and then decide to go Pro.
As for the first part of your reply, trust me, I completely agree. We have done nothing for the past week except tweak our market text, change our name to various things, and so forth to figure out how to work with the new system. We are not just watching it idly and going "OH WOE IS ME!".
The problem is that it is not a level playing field. Extremely popular apps, not just ours, are appearing hundreds of results away while other extremely popular applications are staying right up in the front. It really seems kind of random. Why are some extremely popular apps in the first results, then hundreds of crappy / average apps, then more exceptional applications? It doesn't make a lot of sense.
My post is a bit of a rant, I admit, but it is also meant to be informative so that other developers can see what it means to play in the market.
This has caused our purchases to fall from doing very well to almost getting no purchases at all.
I think you missed this line. Presumably they were doing quite well for themselves, got nailed by some change Google made, and now are not recouping any costs due to all the lost sales.
Sadly, bryanlarsen is correct about Google's culture, especially when it comes to the code they've written: the search code is doing what we told it to and there won't be any reconsideration of decisions made about code.
Yeah, it is probably only a SEO issue. Study why other apps are showing first. Adding shopping list in the end of the name and in the description of the app will probably fix it.
it's ridiculous that the SEO crap has been brought to these app markets and that developers have to worry about this, especially in system that is completely controlled by google. "shopping list" is in the app's description and it's a highly reviewed application with lots of downloads.
google has access to more valuable data here than they do with web searches. if the majority of users search for "shopping list" and end up installing 5 different apps, which do they usually keep installed? rank that one higher for future searches. you can't fake the number of app installs like spammers can gain junk inbound links for pagerank.
My bigger question is how is a $5 app that #2 in its category for paid apps struggling to be profitable (especially since I believe the top paid list are counted by installs)? All of your complaints seem to be about competing with other apps, but you seem to be mostly winning that competition. Are Android app sales so low that #2 in its category app is unprofitable?