App Store Nukes Almost 1 Percent of Its Apps over Rating Scam.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Apple has just pulled 1011 apps from the App Store, that is nearly 1 percent of the 100,000 apps in the App Store. Not surprisingly, these apps are all published by one company, Molinker. Molinker develops apps that mainly involved travel, photography, and public transportation. These apps are usually me-too apps that looked eerily similar to other apps in the same category.

Molinker was caught over the weekend for posting fraudulent app reviews on its apps. Blogger Glyn Evans at iphoneography.com first posted some concerns of his friend, SCW. SCW was surprised to find that many of Molinker’s app had around 50 5-star reviews. Taking a closer look at those reviewers, SCW found that these reviewers only review Molinker apps, giving them 5-stars. Each review share the short, poorly written English that look highly suspicious of a review scammer. SCW concluded that the developer is probably using its own 50 free promotional codes to write 5-star reviews on its apps.

There are currently over 100,000 apps in the App Store. Having 5-star reviews is one way to gain a heads-up in such a competitive environment. But cheating on the ratings does not help the app shoppers. Thus, when notified of Molinker’s rating scam, Phil Schiller, Apple executive in charge of App Store, quickly removed the ratings and banned all of Molinker’s apps in in the App Store.

Appfreak.com managed to contact Molinker to get a response.

We got email from Apple yesterday [Sunday 6th] which told us our contract is changed to pending status. Actually, we do not know what’s wrong so far. We had contacted Apple for such sudden changes, hope we can get quick response and actions from Apple.

There are definitely a lot of rating scams going on in the App Store. Marketing agencies are known to pay iPhone users for great 5-star reviews. Hopefully, Molinker’s case should set an example to other review scammers that Apple is serious about keeping user reviews honest and unbiased. For now, treat user reviews with caution, especially those with less than 100 user reviews.

Molinker’s ban from the App Store may also bode ill for App Store’s spectacular growth. We’ve told you why the App Store got to 100,000 apps so quickly. If Apple starts to crack down on these unethical review scams, more companies like Molinker, who sells thousands of those me-too apps, may get delisted from the App Store. Very quickly, App Store’s app count may start dropping below the 100,000 mark. And that is not a good PR event for Apple which recently prides itself for having 100,000 apps available for download.

This is a post by The Apps Machine