Allen Pike looks at the relevancy of search results on the App Store and walks away concerned. For developers it’s frustrating — apps that legitimately belong under a search result or fall in the category of that keyword are overshadowed by unrelated apps with buzzwords in their titles.

In my echo chamber, Twitterrific and Tweetbot are used by many and praised by all. In the real world, most people are not looking for a paid Twitter app. The App Store is curated with this in mind, and I get that.

Still, it’s frustrating that the Store search algorithm cares almost exclusively about downloads, app title, and keywords. Paid apps get fewer downloads than free apps, so they’re lost in the noise. Instead of Twitterrific, we get Instagram at #2. This isn’t because Instagram is about “Twitter” at all, but because it’s insanely popular, and meets the minimum keyword relevance requirement to appear.