3 MINUTES BULLSHIT WITH GEORGE #17: Black Hat App Store Optimization with Simona Rubanaite

Episode #17 of 3 MINUTES BULLSHIT WITH GEORGE featured Simona Rubanaite, App Store Optimization Strategist at Nord Security. We discussed fraud cases in App Store Optimization.

You can listen to the full episode here:

In this episode of 3 MINUTES BULLSHIT WITH GEORGE, George Natsvlishvili is joined by Simona Rubanaite, App Store Optimization Strategist at Nord Security. Nord Security is one of the world’s leading providers of digital security and privacy solutions for businesses and individuals.

Simona shares her experience as a Mobile Growth Expert about fraud in App Store Optimization.

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Connect with Simona and Zenjob here:

Timestamps:

00:00 Dance

00:14 Simona’s Introduction

00:27 Black Hat App Store Optimization

02:25 Bloopers

Transcript & Key takeaways from the episode:

2 cases of Black Hat ASO are described in this episode:
- 5-star reviews purchase by competitor app.
- Copycat case with a slightly different app name and the same metadata.
5-star reviews purchase by competitor app. There are cases when the competitors are buying your reviews, copying them, and putting them for their reviews just changing your brand name to theirs for the ranking increase. If you see this case feel free to report it to the dedicated app store account manager and via support immediately. Also, try to contact the competitors and warn them that you are aware of it and if they don’t stop you gonna report it to the app store.
Copycat case with a slightly different app name and the same metadata. If you see this case feel free to report it to the app store immediately. There is a form you can fill in. And after several days/weeks app store will remove this app. The issue here is that the copycat brand might be placed next to your brand during your branding search for the whole period until this app will not be removed.

George: Fraud in App Store Optimization: what is your experience? And what did you do?

Simona: So I managed to get two cases. So the first one was a really nontraditional one when the committer of the product comes to you with their brand name in the reviews. So basically, they bought five-star reviews for like a week, copying our own reviews and just changing the brand name. So as a result, they were raking this all around. And yeah, you can basically do nothing about that. So we managed to figure out who did it. We contacted them. They said they don't know who did it, even though it's their brand name, right, who would do that. And we stopped so afterward after week rankings down, reuse, hello, and here we go to sort of the beginning.

And the second one I had is the copycat case. When there are let's say the product name “Apple” and out of the blue, the “Mapple” happens with the same descriptions, titles the same only the letter differs and what you should do. So there are forms you need to fill in order for that app to be removed and to report to the store. The problem here is that a copycat brand is ranking next to you for two to three months and you can do literally nothing just go everyday report, report, report it as a scam. And here still they will go the next year brands representing in all the localizations, in actual the same localizations. But hey, I feel that from that point of view, I did a good job somebody knows that and uses the case.

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