I recently co-authored and published a simple app to test the Android waters and get used to deving for android:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.parp&feature=search_result
The name of the app is ‘Parp’ yet if you search ‘Parp’ it doesn’t appear until after the fourth page of results (seems to fluctuate a bit). The results above it seem to have nothing to do with the word ‘parp’ and are only there because of the spelling similarity to words in their name/description. E.g. there are a lot of apps related to finding where you parked your car. I understand the link here, but I don’t see why an exact match should be so far down in the rankings. We have tried in incorporate the words ‘parp’ and ‘park’ into the description (without making it ridiculous) to move it nearer the top (it used to be past the 10th page of results) but we have only succeeded in getting it as far as page 4. Whilst I’m not expecting it to top out the results for any related search I was hopeing to get it onto the first or second page for its own name.
Does anybody have any pointers on what more we can do, how the marketplace ranks results, or how to choose good app names that should avoid clashes like this? Getting somewhere on the first page would be great, and I don’t see why it should be unachievable given that this is the only app on the market place that has ‘Parp’ in its title (that I’m aware of)!
You are not the only one who experiences this problems: http://androinica.com/2011/07/android-market-search-problems/
It seems that the android market search was updated and now ranks keywords or similar words higher then the exact title of the app. This is very bad for developers who get their users through word of mouth marketing and hope to get downloads through users remembering a unique app name like yours. At the moment there seems to be no solution to this problem.