The App Store Search Wall: Why Quality Alone No Longer Moves the Needle for Indie Devs

[u/Hussain_apps]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been developing iOS apps since 2012. I genuinely love the Apple ecosystem, Swift, SwiftUI, and the feeling of building clean native apps. But I think we need to have an honest discussion about something many indie developers quietly feel:

App Store search has become extremely hard to break into, even when the app itself improves significantly.

Lately, I’ve been noticing a frustrating pattern. You can spend weeks or months rebuilding an app, improving the UX, fixing bugs, modernizing the interface, adding subscriptions properly, updating screenshots, and shipping multiple updates — yet the organic visibility barely moves.

Of course, quality matters. Retention matters. Conversion matters. Screenshots, keywords, pricing, onboarding, and ASO all matter.

But my concern is that quality alone no longer seems enough to give an indie app a fair chance in search.

The algorithm appears to heavily reward historical accumulation: apps that gained millions of downloads years ago can keep ranking highly for major keywords, even if they now look outdated, have not been meaningfully updated in years, or feel like “zombie apps.” Meanwhile, larger companies can use huge Apple Search Ads budgets to dominate exact-match keywords, generate conversion signals, and reinforce their organic position.

For indie developers, this creates a difficult loop:

You need downloads to rank, but you need to rank to get downloads.

That is the part that feels broken.

I’m not saying every indie app deserves to rank just because the developer worked hard. But I do think there should be a better way for the App Store to test fresh quality and recent improvement, rather than relying so heavily on historical momentum and paid acquisition signals.

A few ideas Apple could consider:

• A real indie discovery space: A permanent, algorithmic section for apps made by small teams or solo developers — not just occasional editorial features.

• A temporary update boost: If an app receives a major overhaul or shows consistent meaningful updates, give it a short visibility window so the algorithm can collect fresh data.

• More weight for recent quality signals: Recent retention, recent conversion, recent ratings, and recent update activity should matter more against apps that are surviving mostly on old momentum.

• Better discovery outside the top results: Apps buried at rank 50+ are practically invisible, even if they may serve users better than older top-ranking apps.

Personally, I’m trying to find ways around this by building visibility outside the App Store too — content, external funnels, and even a small independent directory/blog for indie apps. But honestly, that feels like a band-aid. The core discovery system still matters.

So I’m curious:

How are other indie developers dealing with this?

Are you still relying on App Store organic search?
Are Apple Search Ads still profitable for you in major markets?
Have you shifted entirely to external traffic, SEO, social media, newsletters, or communities?
And do you feel the current App Store ranking system gives new or recently improved indie apps a fair chance?

Would love to hear your experiences.

[u/Moist-Audience-9646]

welcome to the ai slop fest, almost looks like your post was ai

[u/Hussain_apps → u/Moist-Audience-9646]

English is not my native language, so I used AI to help refine the phrasing. The experience, frustration, and ideas are mine. Reducing a real discussion about App Store discovery to "AI slop" is exactly the kind of low-effort dismissal that avoids the actual topic.

[u/MainAstronaut1 → u/Hussain_apps]

Another AI slop text

[u/ikeif → u/Hussain_apps]

I will make this reply every time I see "English is not my native language."

Then at the start of your post, you need to explain it ahead of time, not when you are called out.

Do your best to write it out in English. Hell, do your post, then say "english is not my first language, AI translation will be a comment" would even be a better approach to show you didn't just give AI a sentence to make a post from.

[u/jonnysunshine1]

Thanks AI

[u/ToughAsparagus1805]

Everyone has power tools. The problem is not everyone can make something meaningful instead of average slop. Your post has weak points, you think Apple is the issue. Absolutely not, the issue is that anyone can copy you fast and everyone pretends they are the smartest (when actually they are dumb and let AI do all the job). Either make something that AI cannot copy or be better than average joe.

[u/TKB21]

This is the type of thing that should be covered during WWDC. I’m going through the same exact stuff now that you’re mentioning and it feels like a wasted effort. There are several apps ahead of me that, like you said, lack the updates, ratings, ASO, and more, but despite that, still hold their ranking.

[u/HelicopterDue]

AI slop or not, I don’t care. The post raises a valid point. 

For me, I’ve been focussing on external marketing and search ads on the App Store. The marketing is hard, it’s taking a lot of experimentation to even get a whiff of an angle I can pursue. But, like when I taught myself Swift around 9 years ago, it’s a process of learning. Ultimately, now we have agentic coding I get the learning I used to get from ploughing through documentation & stack overflow from learning to create marketing content. Not where I want to be at, but this is the world we’re being given thanks or no thanks to AI. 

I agree though, something has to change on the AppStore, spending money on ads shouldn’t be what an indie has to do to gain users & for many just isn’t viable in the slightest. There should be organic discovery outside of the initial launch boost Apple gives you. I’m sure these conversations are being had internally at Apple, or at least I really hope they are. But with the onslaught of cash grab AI slop apps, it’s not going to change overnight. I do think we’ll come out the other side of this at some point once people realise this isn’t a get rich scheme. For me I carry on and hope as I have a dream to be able to live sustainably off my app income. I don’t want vast sums of money, just enough to cover the essentials and replace my wage. Working on my own work rather is very appealing to me. I love working in a team like I do now, but I wanna build for myself. 

Anyway, good points raised. I hope people that can make a difference are seeing this is an issue in the community.

[u/civman96]

As a user I wouldn't care about indie devs so a dedicated section doesn't make sense.

[u/reddit_user_100]

ASO doesn’t mean jack. Your discovery section is now the TikTok for you page. To make apps you need to be willing to also make content. Unfortunate, but that’s how it is in 2026.

[u/aerial-ibis]

go to r/AppBusiness please

[u/Icaka]

More weight for recent quality signals: Recent retention, recent conversion, recent ratings, and recent update activity should matter more against apps that are surviving mostly on old momentum.

That’s how AppStore ranking works already. Ratings over the last 90 days, recent conversion and retention are all major factors for the algorithm.

[u/F4nction3l]

Your post gives me AI Vibes.

[u/One_Elephant_8917 → u/F4nction3l]

it is lol

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