Apple Are Removing Fake Reviews From App Store

Apple have started removing fake app reviews and ratings from the App Store.

App developers can buy fake reviews to boost an app’s rating on the store, but there have been various reports recently of such reviews being deleted.

TechCrunch noticed a tweet that said 20,000 reviews for an app called Better Fonts See were removed overnight.

Apple is the only one who has this power, unless you take down the app and re-upload it.

TechCrunch quoted a source who said Apple did step in to remove these reviews, and that they “often” delete fraudulent ratings.

Whether this policy will be ramped up in the future remains to be seen, but it is a good sign for those developers and companies who don’t engage in such practices.

This deletion of fake profiles seems to be part of a wider attempt to improve the App Store, with Apple announcing some new features at their developer conference a few weeks ago.

The majority of these focus on better app discovery, considering the huge numbers of apps now on the store.

Rather than just Editors’ Picks and Top Charts, there will be a new Explore tab added. 

From there you can look at categories and sub categories for a deeper search experience.

Trending Searches will be akin to the Twitter trends function, and will show what is currently ‘hot’ on the app store.

This joins the related search suggestions that was put into place earlier this year.

Apple have introduced app bundles, so developers can bunch related apps together and sell them at discounted rates. 

Video previews are also to be brought in, so a consumer can see a short, Vine-style video that showcases the features of an app.