Apple Apps are shooting up at the Top Charts, but they seem to be taking undeserved spots.
With the slew of third-party apps at the App Store, it seems unlikely that Apple Apps are the most popular ones. The Cupertino brand could be conducting a test of some sort or carrying out a marketing scheme, intentionally placing the apps there to promote them, but it's also possible that this is just a bug.
Whatever the case, Apple's ranking system is questionable, where the company's own apps appear and disappear from time to time, jumping from one ranking to another.
This isn't the first time Apple is reportedly revamping the App Store. The people at Sensor Tower started to investigate the ongoing problem back in November, finding out that Apple Apps such as Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iTunes U and GarageBand have been randomly popping up here and there at the Top Charts. They tested the odd behavior on three iPhones running iOS 9.1.
"[S]everal Apple apps [are] suddenly showing up in the App Store's top charts for free apps when viewed on an iOS device – and when the apps are already purchased or downloaded by the user," Randy Nelson, content manager of Sensor Tower, says.
The team also force closed the App Store in an effort to fix the problem. However, it didn't work, but the positions of three Apple Apps did change positions in no particular order. Next, they tried to install Numbers to see whether or not it would disappear from the list. At first, it didn't, but after force closing the App Store two to three times, it did.
Normally, apps don't just turn up and drop out of the Top Charts like that. Also, it goes without saying that when third-party apps exhibit such a pattern, their developers will be blamed of abusing the ranking system.
At any rate, it would be best to just ignore the Apple Apps that hop around the App Store, as they don't really affect the ranking of other third-party apps. All we can do is wait for Apple to give an explanation to find out what's really going on, though.
