Listen up App Store customers .. it turns out not all of those App Store reviews you’ve been reading are genuine. In fact, some are being bought.<\/p>\n
Old news you say? .. Well maybe. But in the case of this new website, we feel this has to be public knowledge as it threatens the very idea of a review site like ourselves. As you are probably aware, we’re part of O.A.T.S<\/a>, or The Organization for App Testing Standards<\/em>, and if you read our review policy<\/a>, you’ll see we’re both loyal to the cause and determined to completely phase out inflated, biased opinions and reviews regarding App Store applications. <\/p>\n The iPhone space is the one place which reviews are really valued by customers, but they should never be valued in a monetary sense. As soon as they are, they become worthless. These reviews exist and Apple allows for them to be published to the store for one sole reason; they provide a true depiction of the product you are about to buy or download from the store, and these should, in no way, reflect a false story or smoke and mirrors.<\/p>\n Now as we all know, after you purchase an app you then have the opportunity to tell the world about your experience of that app in the form of an App Store review. We all know that certain App Store developers may pad their reviews out a bit with their own views, friends or even close family, which is bad enough – But paying for App Store reviews, and positive ones at that? .. Well, if we’re not mistaken, that’s just plain illegal.<\/p>\n One such site, YourAppReviewed, offers just this, allowing App Store developers to purchase “packages” of reviews in increasing price increments – and from their “How It Works” page, it soon becomes clear that the site will hold back reviews before publishing them to the store, until “approved” by the developer. <\/p>\n \n1- Order the number of reviews you need from our store.<\/p>\n 2- If your app isn’t free, provide us with an equal number of Promotional Codes from iTunes\u00c2\u00ae Connect*. (Developers can request up to 50 codes for each of their application. Connect to your iTunes Connect to request and download these codes). Please quote your order number in the subject line of your email and send them to [e-mail removed]<\/strong>.<\/p>\n 3- After providing us with your codes, real iPhone\u00c2\u00ae and iPod\u00c2\u00ae touch users with US iTunes accounts will be hired by YourAppReviewed.com to download and review your app. These reviews will be completed within 48 hours.<\/p>\n 4- Depending on their reviews, one of two scenarios will apply:<\/p>\n a. If a reviewer likes your app and gives it a 4 or 5-star rating, he or she will post his\/her review in English on the US App Store, without your prior approval.<\/p>\n b. If a reviewer decides to give your app a 1, 2 or 3-star rating, he or she will send us their constructive criticism and comments. This information will be forwarded to you for approval prior to being posted on the App Store. The reviewers will not post their comments unless you decide that they should. Whether or not you want these reviews published on the App Store, you will have gained valuable insight into how your app could be improved.<\/p>\n 5- YourAppReviewed.com will send you a summary of all reviews along with their status (submitted to the App Store and\/or sent to developer) within 72 hours, to keep for your records.<\/em>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![<\/a><\/p>\nNow, although we know the App Store allows you to post negative reviews, in normal circumstances the developer wouldn’t have control over this, meaning the review process is both fair and depicts a true picture of the app’s functionality and flaws (if any). However, YourAppReviewed is quite different. The site will hold back reviews at the developer’s own discretion, meaning effectively they are selling positive reviews. <\/p>\nWe’re not sure how long this site has been going for, but we are pretty sure that when Apple gets word of what they’re doing, it won’t be round for much longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen up App Store customers! It turns out not all of those glowing App Store reviews you’ve been reading are genuine. In fact, some are being bought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,174,2144,2028,16,17],"tags":[3500,2394,18,2395,830,2396],"class_list":["post-17696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-app-store","category-blog","category-breaking-blog","category-ipad","category-iphone","category-ipod","tag-app-store","tag-inflated","tag-itunes","tag-oats","tag-reviews","tag-yourappreviewed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17696"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17739,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17696\/revisions\/17739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/packagaes.png\"){kind=link}