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It's worse than just meaningless, it's actively trying to get a bullshit SEO advantage, which is essentially zero-sum at best and makes things worse for users.

If my app is named "CoolBrowser", the title on Google Play should not be "Better Browser than Chrome". If my app is named "SketchyVPN", the title on Google Play should not be "Netflix Region Locking Bypasser".

At best, these are workarounds for the Play store's shitty lack of searchable metadata (why can't I filter out apps that aren't open source?), at worse they're Nigerian prince style scams that suck in unknowledgable users.



> why can't I filter out apps that aren't open source?

This is laughable. It's 2021 and we still can't to basic filtering in our app stores. Maybe google (and Apple) engineers only know SELECT, but haven't learned about WHERE yet? Yeah i know it's a little much to demand. I mean we only went to the moon like 52 years ago.


I basically gave up using the play store since I could not find any way to search/find 'ad free' or 'tracking free' or 'open source' etc.

The very few apps I use from the play store are either ad free or offer a premium version to remove ads completely - it's the only thing I'll put on my phone.

Seems there is too big a conflict of interest for even basic phone functionality - apps with ads make the money tree keep raining.

One day my (paid for prem version) "timed / scheduled silence" app pushed ads out to all users on an update and I had quite the back and forth with them - they fixed it - but did not seem to care one iota that their full screen overlay ads would prevent a mom from answering here phone right away or other basic functions. - It was all about the money and they were going to maximize that.

All the while no incentive for google to make basic functions available in android or find-able in the play store. So little competition for the abusive, ad-ladden, add basic function to your phone parasites.

Glad to find f-droid at least, but I've given up on using my phone for as many things as it's capable of because the search and find is no-ad-hostile.


with currently 2 exceptions, i only use apps from f-droid. I think I'll buy a pinephone one of these days to throw some dev time at it, we really need an alternative to ios and android


It's because Play Store puts a lot of weight on title and very little in the short or long descriptions. For a company that is reputed to be the best in search, Play Store has terrible search policies.

Look up "bypass netflix" and guess what pops up. Unfortunately it's the only way to SEO in the Play Store. The impact is so strong that I avoid branding now, it makes more sense to register your VPN company as "Region Locking Bypasser".


Its the same for Etsy sellers. My wife sells on Etsy and several (non-tech) people that she follows recommend making the title a short description. It's annoying. Yet she does it because it works.




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