TechCrunch:
App developers know that having good ratings and reviews means more users will be wiling to download their app. And thanks to ratings’ influence on Apple’s ranking algorithms, it will help their app be better discovered via the App Store’s Top Charts as well. Because of this, some — okay, many — developers manipulate their apps’ positions by posting fake ratings and reviews. It’s sort of common knowledge these days, in fact. Any brief, glowing, five-star review is immediately suspect.
As it turns out, it’s suspect to Apple, too. And now the company is doing something about it.
This is one of the reasons why I never pay any attention to ratings on the App Store. The only ratings I care about are from friends or trusted sources.
Shawn, your final comment is precisely why I bought Screens after it was mentioned a couple days ago on this site as a replacement for my previous VNC solution.
This isn’t just another Apple problem. Online reviews and ratings – everywhere – are a decade behind (more?) in the overall ecommerce race.
I try to read through ratings and use common sense to determine if the review is legit and if I really care I’ll search duckduckgo to see if there are any other relevant reviews and read about the products as well. I guess I’ve always relied on that type of research. While ratings may make it easier to see if the app in question is any good, as we can see that is not reliable. I guess easy, as usual, doesn’t equal reliable.
Yep. They should just copy Android (again).
(braces for flame war)