[Android Apps and Games] Skyica:
How App Finder may benefit app developers

The Play Store makes it very hard for less popular apps to be discovered

With billions of users, Google Play has a huge potential for app developers. However, its search and explore functionality benefits almost exclusively already popular apps, and apps for which developers pay advertisements.

Other apps are very difficult to find, even if they are high quality, highly useful, innovative, or have unique features. This is an obvious problem for both many users and many developers.

This is due to several issues with the Play Store search:

It strongly prefers popularity over query match.

If not forced to keyword search by using quotes, it often does not return less popular relevant results, or returns them only after many popular but irrelevant results.

See the next post for examples.

In most of the world, it shows local ratings only, which are available for just about 1.5% – 20% of apps, while global ratings are available for about 55% of apps. When users filter for 4 or 4.5 stars, apps without local rating are hidden.

See

here

for further explanation.

The result list is uninformative and uninteresting, so that it can be expected that users generally give up early and just decide for one of the first results.

Further shortcomings are that the result count is not given, that the results are not numbered, that there are no systematic sort options, and that the keywords are not highlighted.

App Finder solves these issues and makes a better search available to everyone

It makes it easy to find all relevant apps:

Keyword search is used by default, and only apps where every keyword is matched are returned. By adding keywords, it is easy to make the query more specific. AI-based semantic search is planned as an alternative.

Further, there are many filters to refine the search without losing less popular apps, and there are sort options for average user rating and release date.

This often makes it possible to reduce the result count until all results can quickly be examined.

It is also possible to filter for few user ratings, and to sort the results by number of ratings ascending. While most people probably will not use these options, some do look for “hidden gems”.

See the next post for examples

It shows global ratings for apps without local ratings

Also, it has the option to use global ratings for filter and sort.

Alternatively, users from small countries may choose to see ratings from a large country of their choice (note that there are ratings for about 8 times more apps for the US than for New Zealand, for example).

See

here

for further explanation.

The result list is highly informative and engaging,

Systematic sort options, result count, result numbering, and keyword highlight provide orientation.

While we don’t have a comparison with the Play Store, App Finder’s users do scroll much: Of the about 60,000 queries that App Finder received in the last 6 months, the result list was scrolled about 9500 times over 30 results, 2400 times over 80 results, 830 times over 180 results, and 100 times over 380 results.

App Finder has the potential to reach the widest possible audience

The core functionality is available for free and without ads.

It has local prices, age ratings, and user ratings for all 200+ counties / regions supported by Google Play. Support for many languages will be added soon.

It is available on Google Play and as APK with a very small download size. Devices without Play Store and Google Play services are supported.

It is optimized for phones and tablets of all sizes, and for older and slower devices and slow connections.

It does not require sign-in, does not collect personal data, does not share user data with third parties, requires minimal permissions, and includes very little 3rd-party code.

It links to the Play Store so that the apps are installed from a trusted source.

It is designed to be easy and intuitive to use and includes a complete user guide and other help.

A web interface will be available soon.

App Finder can help developers to analyze the market and the competition

The advanced keyword search, many filters, and the highly informative result list provide a significant advantage for this.

It has information not accessible on Google Play: User ratings with two decimals, lists of the global and all local ratings and rating distributions, and the exact download count.

Result lists with thousands of apps can easily be exported as CSV for further analysis.

App Finder facilitates the creation of comprehensive comparative app reviews

Most app reviews on the web do not provide a comprehensive objective overview of best apps.

This is an obvious problem for users.

But it is also especially a problem for independent developers of innovative high-quality apps.

App Finder is highly useful for the creation of thorough reviews.

For an example, see

this review

of advanced Android calculator apps, which includes many excellent little-known apps from independent developers. A shortened version is available here.