Filed under: Gaming, Software, Odds and ends, iPhone, App Store
Digital Chocolate: We're owning single-digit search on the App Store
We've mentioned Digital Chocolate and their App Store releases before, of course, and we've even mentioned just how prevalent they are -- they've been extremely prolific in releasing new titles, and as a result, they've posted on their website that they are more or less ubiquitous in search results. They say on their official blog that any search of a "single digit" on the App Store search window has about a 20% chance of pulling up a Digital Chocolate release. If you search for "D," "H" or "3," they're the number one hit. I don't actually know anyone that searches "D" anywhere ("You know what I really want to play tonight? A 'D' related game!"), but it just shows how many releases they've got out there.That does get them plenty of downloads -- they also say that they're number one in downloads on the platform as a whole, with 40 million downloads already of their software, with 1.5 million reviews (!) total -- but I think it says more about the App Store in general, and that we're not quite as far along as it might seem. If one company could so easily own, say, Amazon's search, you'd just say that Amazon needed a bigger catalog, no? 85,000 is certainly a lot of apps (especially in the realm of mobile software), but in terms of the platform's progress as a whole, it's still in its infancy.
So we're definitely in for more growth. Even Digital Chocolate sounds a little surprised that they're so prevalent, and I think as the App Store ecosystem grows and we get more and more companies with popular titles in different areas, we'll see the search results become more diverse.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
alex keeny said 12:31PM on 10-27-2009
Um... Search is live, meaning that if you started to type a word with a "D", you would see them listed at the top. So to counter what you said, many people search just a "D" in the process of searching.
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punkassjim said 1:06PM on 10-27-2009
And yet still, without clicking on any of the links in your post (I haven't been given incentive to do so), I have no idea what they offer, or why I should care. For all I know, they're just polluting the marketplace.
Now, I've clicked the first link you gave, and it told me nothing about what they offer. The second link, also not a single one of their offerings was mentioned by name. Even the third link, which takes me to Digital Chocolate's own site, doesn't mention any of their products until an obscure parenthetical, buried deep in the second (run-on) paragraph.
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milkmage said 8:04PM on 10-27-2009
you should have figured out by now that most links point back to TUAW.
the 3rd link goes to BLOG @digitalchocolate not the home page.
hmmm i wonder where their home page could be.
punkassjim said 8:17PM on 10-27-2009
Thanks, I know these things. I was posting to express a point, not to find out more information.
Stephen P said 2:22PM on 10-27-2009
I see a future in App Store SEO consultancy.
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punkassjim said 8:18PM on 10-27-2009
If you think they haven't been doing it since day one, you'd be wrong.
Ian said 7:15PM on 10-27-2009
Erm "D" and "H" aren't digits, they're letters of the alphabet... maybe they meant "single character" searches...
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Dirk said 7:07AM on 10-28-2009
Struck me as pretty strange too. I would at least have expected a [sic] after "single digit" in this post.
On another who in the world would hire a CEO who confuses digits with letters?