How The Chinese Manipulate App Store Rankings

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Have you ever wondered how terrible apps end up being ranked really high in the App Store? This might be the reason. Now every time I see a high ranked crappy app, this picture is going to pop into my head. :D

An app manipulation farm sounds like someplace developers would go for a weekend retreat, complete with chiropractor sessions. In fact — according to a photo which has gone viral on social media in China — it’s a place where devs can pay for their apps’ download numbers to be artificially inflated.
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All online reviews are turning to crap. Even supposedly trustworthy ones like "amazon verified review", as I keep getting free products sent to me with the implication that to keep that gravy train floating, I have to try and give a detailed review that isn't negative.
 
Eh, companies do this with every online type of review from Amazon to Yelp, this is not a surprise except that it seems a bit more expensive (assuming the app cost money).

That said the most hilarious part of this is obviously they don't both to keep that place warm, she's wearing a full a jacket and has a hand warmer in her lap.
 
Amazon really needs to address this because it is turning customers off. If you go to look at supplements or any weightlifting stuff, if it is not a brand you are familiar with and is 5 stars its probably a fake product from china with 500 reviews.

Took me about 40 hours to find a mattress actually made in the USA and not just "USA" sticker on it on amazon. I had to call a few places to verify they were real. It helps to look at 1 star reviews, they no longer are lame shoppers but real people that got scammed.
 
Agree. Online reviews used to be great. Now that companies are submitting fake reviews for their products.....it makes the whole thing pointless.

What I really hate are the "articles" that are really just a sales pitch for the product being "reviewed".

Word of mouth has always been better. Pretty soon it's going to be the only thing that hasn't been corrupted.
 
Scythe said:
Agree. Online reviews used to be great. Now that companies are submitting fake reviews for their products.....it makes the whole thing pointless.
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Yeah online reviews used to be great, for all of about a week before someone figured they could artificially manipulate the system and make a buck while doing it.
 
I think the attention-grabber here is the "Chinese" part in the article title. It sounds a lot less cool to point out that non-Chinese people are probably doing it too. It's sorta like adding the words "on Facebook" to normal news to make it exciting and trendy news that's on the cutting edge of the technology horizon except this appeals to ultra-nationalists who are everywhere but in China. :p
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I think the attention-grabber here is the "Chinese" part in the article title. It sounds a lot less cool to point out that non-Chinese people are probably doing it too.
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Its relevant because the Chinese are notorious for product and review tampering and generally just extremely shady business practices, compared to say German, Japanese, or American businesses which have a higher reputation. Only other major consumer product hub like it is South Korea, and while they are bad, they aren't Chinese bad.
 
I always look for negative or non-5star reviews on something first looking for patterns. Ignore that ones that people were obviously being dumb and bought the wrong thing, also ignoring "great product" crap. Usually I can get a fairly good idea of what I'm getting into, with products anyway. The app reviews, that's just a dice roll. It's almost as bad with AAA game titles these days.
 
Amazon should limit to people who bought the item and actually had it "delivered". I know this will nuke a lot of reviews...but that is life.
 
Please people, if all you do is look at the number of stars then you deserve to get scammed. Read reviews for information they contain, facts, look at how the reviewer discusses things you can typically tell really fast if a reviewer is just another canned 5 star review or a serious savvy user bringing a real issue or review to light.

5 star reviews have always been a problem and its not just review farming the majority of customers are dumber than shit and they really think they have a 5 star product. Many times people have never had a product like that before and anyone they get would be 5 stars to them. I bet beats head phones have rave reviews too....
 
rudy said:
Please people, if all you do is look at the number of stars then you deserve to get scammed. Read reviews for information they contain, facts, look at how the reviewer discusses things you can typically tell really fast if a reviewer is just another canned 5 star review or a serious savvy user bringing a real issue or review to light.
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There are actual businesses that specialize in writing reviews. They have a professional reviewer whose only job from 8AM-5PM is to register accounts and generate fake hand-written reviews.

Think about it, I could work from home and probably churn out 300 really well written reviews a week with absolute ease.
 
Well at least it's not a sweat shop judging from the winter clothing and hand warmers used.
 
Ducman69 said:
There are actual businesses that specialize in writing reviews. They have a professional reviewer whose only job from 8AM-5PM is to register accounts and generate fake hand-written reviews.

Think about it, I could work from home and probably churn out 300 really well written reviews a week with absolute ease.
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And if you were paid to do that how many companies would hire you if you put negative information in the review or only rated it 3 stars? As I clearly said look for information indisputable facts that keep popping up over and over not bogus opinions. Second a pro reviewer is almost always lazy and rarely even has the product in front him himself being a pro means shit, fact is in most of my life average hobbyist easily stand out over pros in almost every product or hobby I deal with. Pros make mistakes, and they aren't able to go many places a real reviewer can go because they aren't paid to give 2 star reviews. At the end of the day if I buy a product and some professional reviewer misled me, shits going strait back to amazon on amazons dime.... Once again the only thing a professional reviewer can do is drag the average up, he cant make up utter garbage and get away with it for any length of time. If he writes 300 good reviews and 100 people buy the product based on that and have a band experience maybe 50 of those people come back and issue 1 star reviews trashing all his work.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I think the attention-grabber here is the "Chinese" part in the article title. It sounds a lot less cool to point out that non-Chinese people are probably doing it too. It's sorta like adding the words "on Facebook" to normal news to make it exciting and trendy news that's on the cutting edge of the technology horizon except this appeals to ultra-nationalists who are everywhere but in China. :p
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The issue is the cheap labor making this practical.
 
Ducman69 said:
There are actual businesses that specialize in writing reviews. They have a professional reviewer whose only job from 8AM-5PM is to register accounts and generate fake hand-written reviews.

Think about it, I could work from home and probably churn out 300 really well written reviews a week with absolute ease.
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Oh yeah, it's become a huge part of "Reputation Management". You can't trust anything any more.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I think the attention-grabber here is the "Chinese" part in the article title. It sounds a lot less cool to point out that non-Chinese people are probably doing it too.
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That's the thing, I don't think it's the fact that Chinese are doing it, but how they are doing it China. The lady in the picture is in front of some 100 or so iPhones, and behind that you see another tray of what's probably another 100 iPhones, and who knows how many of those setups are in that building. Where as non-Chinese probably wouldn't go for such a brute force/low tech tactic they'd create an app which does this same thing, maybe on a virtual phone that they can wipe and do it over again.

I mean if there's 200 iPhones in that picture alone, if they bought these retail that's over $100k just in phones... although the more likely solution is they fell off the proverbial back of a truck.
 
Online reviews, have and will always be bullshit streams. I don't believe a single one. This only proves why. Sure, make an app, get all of your co-workers, family, and friends to 5 star it. Yeah, believable. Lol at the chinese review farm. I mean, when the chinese have a niche to fill, they have more than enough people to do it. Hey, want to clear out that snow storm rubble? No problem, send 50k PLA fodder with shovels to do it. Problem solved.
 
In china, there's a market for everything.

After finally upgrading to a smartphone recently, I've downloaded countless shitty apps which I've immediately uninstalled.
I'm helping to inflate the download meter too.
 
Is it true that you can refund something if you are not satisfied?
 
For online product reviews, it's a good idea to check out the reviewer. Look at what kind of reviews they have. See if they behave like a real person - buying various stuff, writing a few reviews on some, etc. Paid reviewers will often write using a "formula", where the reviews all look very similar. If the person only has one review on one product and it's glowing, well, might not be a good review to listen to. If they have several negative reviews on similar products that are competing with each other, that's another red flag. I've seen some pretty pathetic and uninformative reviews as well, like "Sucks, doesn't work", etc. Ok... why doesn't it work? What went wrong? What did it do/not do? Same with positive reviews. If it doesn't offer information about why someone thinks it's the greatest thing since the portable flamethrower, then that doesn't help me. Verbage can be an instant turnoff as well. Glad it works great for you! Now tell me why *I* should buy it? If someone uses corporate-speak or excessive slang, or slang that is out of context, or SHOUT TEXT, I'm not going to pay much attention to that. It's either a corporate plant in the former case, or an idiot in the latter cases. If the person uses terminology that makes sense to the product, such as "This was advertised as buffered, ECC, but it's actually unbuffered, non-ECC and isn't compatible with my [insert system board model here]. I tried contacting the vendor but so far they've not returned my emails", that's going to sound more like a real issue from someone that knows that they're talking about. "I bought this, tried plugging it in and my computer just sits there and beeps at me! WORST MEMORY EVER!" - I'm not going to listen to you because you're either paid to write that and don't know a thing about the product or you're a dumbass and shouldn't be allowed near tools except to (hopefully) electrocute yourself prior to procreating.

Another one that helps is on sites like Amazon is seeing if the person that wrote the review bothers to provide feedback to comments in that review or answer questions people have about a product. It gives you a little more insight into the person to see if they're "real" or paid off. A paid reviewer isn't likely to engage in discussion, or if they do they'll come off sounding obvious.

I can't really say much about apps... I don't use any mobile devices so I have no experience with them. There, now how's that for honest feedback?
 
sfsuphysics said:
Eh, companies do this with every online type of review from Amazon to Yelp, this is not a surprise except that it seems a bit more expensive (assuming the app cost money).
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The reviews for Yelp! on the iTunes App store is hilarious. Because the iPhone links to the Yelp app when you click Review in the Maps app, people accidently put reviews for all kinds of shit for the Yelp app and give it terrible ratings as well.

yelp_review.jpg
 
That is amazing. I'm in the app development space - I learned years ago to read reviews about our apps with a grain of salt. There are a lot of fucktards who can't do simple tasks - but are more than happy to give you a 1 star for their stupidity. Most users don't leave ANY feedback. It seems like we were getting 1 or 5 stars. Nothing much in-between.
We then started getting emails to help us improve our ratings. Maybe from a farm like is pictured in this article. We have not gone down that road. I hope we don't.
 
this is reminiscent of gamergate -the idiotic counter to the movement that then blames the consumer aka gamers x_x;

that said, this screenshot is definitely bizzare to what lengths they will go to scam users by providing false ratings ... maybe we shouldn't be surprised, but the way they did it to me anyway is a surprise lelz.
 
sfsuphysics said:
That's the thing, I don't think it's the fact that Chinese are doing it, but how they are doing it China. The lady in the picture is in front of some 100 or so iPhones, and behind that you see another tray of what's probably another 100 iPhones, and who knows how many of those setups are in that building. Where as non-Chinese probably wouldn't go for such a brute force/low tech tactic they'd create an app which does this same thing, maybe on a virtual phone that they can wipe and do it over again.

I mean if there's 200 iPhones in that picture alone, if they bought these retail that's over $100k just in phones... although the more likely solution is they fell off the proverbial back of a truck.
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Yep cheap labor allows this to be viable rather than automating all/most of it.

You're right, that's a lot of money just in iPhones. Apparently they won't spend a single Yuan on heating though (that worker is wearing a jacket and a hand warmer/mitten thing indoors).
 
travbrad said:
Yep cheap labor allows this to be viable rather than automating all/most of it.

You're right, that's a lot of money just in iPhones. Apparently they won't spend a single Yuan on heating though (that worker is wearing a jacket and a hand warmer/mitten thing indoors).
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The reason they don't use any heating is because that many iPhones being used in such a small space would burst into flames if the temps were any higher :D
 
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