Many developers encountered a very scary thing last week, their applications were deleted for no reason as few as thousands or millions of reviews.

It is speculated that Apple is cleaning up app reviews on a large scale, with more than 22 million reviews being removed from the App Store in countries such as the US, China, UK, South Korea, Russia and Australia.

Apple recently began to increase its intensity to regulate the App Store

Following the clearance of the list of words and the tightening of the audit, Apple has recently turned its attention to the user reviews on the App Store, and the massive deletion of reviews has caught some CPs off guard.

Apple had adjusted the ranking logic algorithm of the App Store best-selling apps list

Apple has begun to step up its efforts to fix the App Store by using manual methods to eliminate Click farming and fake reviews.

Click farming refers to the use of artificial means by software developers to improve the ranking of the App in the download ranking, in order to keep the software ranking top and improve the number of downloads.

Apple App Store, Android's various application distribution channels, have long been plagued by malicious brush list of application software, Click farming behavior has become an unspoken rule in the App field.

In order to cope with the proliferation of malicious click farming, Apple once adjusted the ranking logic algorithm of the App Store best-selling applications list, and the new algorithm included users' ratings of applications, which changed the previous ranking algorithm based on the number of downloads and fixed time download speed.

 

The new algorithm

The adjustment is said to be global, involving 155 countries and regions, with the U.S. being the focus area, with more than 10 million reviews removed, followed by China, the U.K., South Korea, Russia and Australia.

So far, no one from the affected developers has been able to offer a reasonable explanation for this. Some speculate that Apple is cleaning up fake reviews, but they also say they have never done fake ratings or reviews.

It's interesting to note that Apple had a similar incident last year, which was later explained as a "mistake". However, developers say this incident is not the same as last year.

This year, most apps were only affected in a few countries and regions, not all of them, suggesting that this was not a simple "mistake" but a deeper consideration by Apple.

Analyzing all the data, we found that the most deleted reviews in this adjustment were three-star and four-star reviews, which were deleted by 40% and 41% respectively. Two-star reviews were deleted by 36%, while five-star reviews with the most fake reviews were deleted by only 35%.

Why is your app’s reviews got deleted?

Ratio

The ratio between the number of app downloads, reviews, andratings is very important, and dissimilar ratios can lead to your app being identified as click farming.

Reviewed account

Reviewing an account from a click farm or having a history of similar behavior puts that account at risk for any future behavior, and the app being reviewed will also be affected.

 

Sensitive words

If the reviews contains prohibited words or sensitive words, then this review is likely to be deleted.

 

Volume

If the volume of reviews is too large, the behavior of the reviews will be judged as bizarre by the app store, and these reviews and ratings will be at risk of being deleted.

 

Plagiarism

Reviews are best when they are original. If your reviews are copied from others or from other apps, they will be available in the app store's database, which will cause your reviews to be deleted or affect your app.

What kind of reviews are good reviews?

Legitimate

Avoid sensitive words or illegal words in your reviews.

Apple is very strict about these words, and if you are caught, then there is a high chance that your reviews will be deleted and the account used to review will have problems, or even risk being blocked.

Natural

The wording of the reviews that appear under your app and the way they are written needs to be as natural as possible so that the weight of your reviews will increase. 

In fact, a small number of natural, high-weighted reviews can have a much better effect on ap rankings than a large number of unnatural reviews, so reviews need to focus on quality, not quantity.

 

Original and organic

Originality is very important. These reviews must be humanly written in order to have the effect of increasing weight. So try to write your own reviews, or make appropriate changes to some existing reviews so that they are organic.