Apple Improves App Store Search Engine to Recognize Typos and Misspellings This update should increase the number of apps that turn up in a user's search, in turn increasing app developers' visibility.
By Benjamin Kabin •
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App developers should be seeing increased visibility in Apple's App Store. A few weeks ago Apple made a slight change to its App Store search engine in order to return better results for misspelled queries. The changes mean that poor spellers and users with imprecise typing skills will have an easier time finding what they're looking for.
That, in turn, means developers could see an increase in the number of downloads their products receive. The changes were confirmed by TechCrunch,
Compared to the Google Play store, Apple's search engine was much less forgiving. For example, misspelling the word "calendar" like "calender" yielded 100 times more results on Google Play. SearchMan, an SEO company said that in the App Store, the term only appeared to pull up apps whose developers had thought to add it to its keywords. Other misspellings, like "resteraunt," hotwls" and "fasion" yielded similar results.
Even if the percentages are small, the changes should help hundreds of thousands of users find what they want more easily and avoid downloading similar sounding apps that don't actually do what they want.
Related: How to Make Your Mobile App Stand Out in the Ever-Expanding App Market
