Apple cleaning up the App Store


Apple Thursday sent a notice to registered developers about plans to improve the App Store inventory of apps. The company plans to clear out unsupported apps and address issues of long app names.

there are also apps on the App Store that no longer function as intended or follow current review guidelines, and others which have not been supported with compatibility updates for a long time. We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps for these issues, notifying their developers, and removing problematic and abandoned apps from the App Store.

For file names, Apple plans to require new apps to be no longer than 50 characters. The goal appears to improve search engine optimization and limit keyword spamming.

Cleaning out the old apps seems overdue and perhaps a relic of the days when numbers of apps was important to marketing. The file name thing is interesting. Given Apple will be accepting paid advertising on App Store search, the timing to improve SEO is probably not a coincidence