App Store Search Malfunctions, Apple Quickly Fixes It: What Happened?

Apple's App Store encountered a major glitch, breaking the app's search feature that people use to search for iOS apps. The company noticed the problem and quickly pushed out a fix to the issue.

The problem, which cropped up in the morning of May 5, affected the search experience of those who are looking for a particular iOS app on the App Store. The app's search functionality went haywire, in which it was not able to return back the appropriate search results users requested for. Rather than showing up the desired apps, App Store provided them with inaccurate, unrelated or strange results. Reports say that even the well-renowned apps, like Google, Uber, Spotify or YouTube, were difficult to locate.

Some people report that upon searching for Spotify, the App Store would give them results that are related to music streaming but not the particular app they asked for.

The developer of the Dashy Crashy game, Craig Grannell, also noticed that the App Store link did not work to locate apps.

While Apple has yet to push out its statement revealing the cause for this Apple Store bug, USA Today, in the meantime, reports that a person familiar with the company's position on the problem says that this glitch was "not caused by malicious hacker." The publication's source did not want to be named, as they are not authorized to reveal the matter to the public.

Reddit and Twitter users initially shared the news, although it was later confirmed by Apple on its system status page. At first, the status page did not indicate that a problem existed in the app. However, the indicator was then changed to yellow.

"Service is not working as expected for all users," read the note on the page.

Apple also acknowledged the issue on its support page.

"Users are experiencing a problem with the App Store," it said. "We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available."

TechCrunch reports that at 11:54 a.m. ET, the problem seemed to have been resolved, although it says that it is presently looking into reports suggesting that issues are still encountered by other users. The issue was reported to begin around 5 a.m.

Last month, Tech Times reported that Apple could be considering a big makeover to its App Store. The tweaks to the App Store could include a new strategy that could charge developers to make their apps prominently shown.

Check out some of the users' tweets below reporting the issue they encountered on the Apple Store.