Saturday, June 23, 2012

What's wrong with Search in Google Play

What's wrong with the search in Google Play ?

Yesterday, I was looking for something in my sliding tile puzzle called 'Nature Puzzle'.
So I opened Google Play website, and started with a search for 'Nature Puzzle'.

Here is the result :












We have :
* Photo Puzzle Game, NumberPuzzle,
* Nature Puzzles,
* Nature Puzzle,
* Natural Seasons,
* Zoo and Nature Puzzle 2 in 1
* kids Puzzle:Animal

and my game is not listed !

What I don't understand is that I gave the exact name, and I didn't find it !
I looked at the last app (kids Puzzle Animal ) more closely, and there is only 1 occurence of 'natural' in the description.
And the application called 'Nature Puzzle' ( so with the exact same name as mine ), it has the same rating, and less downloads.

Note that
* I'm not complaining here that my application does not have enough visibility : I only published it as a proof of concept of Html5 android applications
* I'm not asking the description of the search algorithms in the Google Play Store !

I'm just amazed that, from a customer point of view, giving the exact name of an application does not bring this application to the top !


Actually, if I specify that I want to search only in Android apps, then my game appears at the 7th rank :


















I even discovered another application named 'Nature Puzzle' ( it now sounds like a very common name ), that is even more badly ranked than mine !


Am I the only one to found it strange ?
Do you feel like there are some reasons, for the customer, not to put the application with the exact name first in the search results ?
Do you understand how the ranking is done ?