I’m reaching out on behalf of our group to request some clarification on how and when apps are surfaced to users.
We’ve seen some confusion and feedback around apps not appearing in the categories they were submitted to. We’re investing meaningful time into building tools we believe are useful for the community, so it would be helpful to better understand the criteria or process behind visibility.
Having more transparency here would allow us to refine our apps and align more closely with what delivers the best user experience. Right now, the lack of clarity makes it difficult to know how to improve or what to prioritize.
We’d really appreciate any guidance you can share.
Hey there! Is this related to how they’re showing up inside the directory? To be honest, the directory listings right now are fairly manual at the moment and we’re experimenting with different ways to surface connectors to users in a way that’s fair.
I’d be curious to hear what kind of discovery mechanisms you think would make sense! We’ve of course seen more algorithmic approaches as well as editorial ones in different app stores, and given user memories the recommendation algorithm could be a bit more personalized as well.
Thanks again for engaging on this. I wanted to share a prioritized set of suggestions that we believe would materially improve app discovery, quality signals, and overall ecosystem health:
User ratings across the board
Allow all users to rate apps. This creates a strong, scalable signal around quality and gives you better data to rank and surface apps effectively.
Category sorting based on actual usage
Ranking apps within categories based on real engagement (vs. primarily featuring established names) would better reflect what users are finding valuable and create a more merit-based ecosystem. I see the apps on the current store never change, are static and not related to actual ussage.
Initial traffic seeding for new apps
New apps shouldn’t sit at zero usage for extended periods. Even a small amount of guaranteed exposure would help overcome the cold-start problem and generate meaningful signals/data for openAI to analyze.
Language-based filtering (default to user’s language)
Let users filter apps by language, with a default that prioritizes their primary language. This should significantly improve relevance and engagement.
Leverage app metadata more effectively
Direct prompts included in our app’s metadata could play a larger role in indexing, categorization, and surfacing apps.
“New apps” section
A dedicated section for recently launched apps would improve discovery and give builders an initial window to gain traction.
Dedicated “Games” category
This feels like a high-potential vertical that likely deserves its own category.
This makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing! I’m forwarding this onto my team. To be transparent, I don’t know when we would be implementing these changes, but I do personally agree with all of these. Anything that does end up coming through we’ll be sure to share out!
Great list, Jonathan. I’d add one more point that I think fits naturally alongside these. The public app landing pages currently don’t surface in Google either.
The pages appear to be client-rendered with no app-specific title or meta description in the initial HTML. That’s a second discovery channel that’s effectively switched off.
I had set external backlinks pointing to my app page assuming it would behave like a normal indexable product page, and that work is wasted as long as crawlers see no useful HTML.
Discovery is non-existent and should be the highest priority imho.
Our app:
Follows all guidelines, is performant, no bugs,…
~50 people/day (60% use the app meaningfully, 40% drive-by/explorers)
Realistic/informed estimate ~5m people/week type queries that match our tool description very closely (highly relevant and user would benefit from using the app)
I agree this would be very helpful. Right now, it’s difficult for developers to understand why some apps get surfaced more frequently while others do not appear in their selected categories.
More transparency around:
App discovery criteria
Ranking/signals used
Category review process
Quality expectations
User engagement factors
would help developers improve their apps in the right direction instead of guessing.
Even basic guidance on what influences visibility most would make a big difference for teams investing serious development time into the ecosystem.
Hopefully the OpenAI team can provide more clarity on this soon.
Same here, despite some organic hits coming from ChatGPT, I already had before the app. Bot traffic increased though! At least something..
And as I already mentioned, the apps landing page does not rank in Google, because the content is post fetched via JavaScript and invisible to Google at this stage.
That’s a common story among almost every developer on this forum. It leads me to believe that apps are NOT being surfaced, at all, by ChatGPT. In addition, there is no way to discover our apps because they keep the app store category pages static, and only show the “Top Brands” like Canva.
