Posting to document a case that matches a pattern of unresolved reports on this forum (e.g. thread #815203 "Brutal Time"), with the addition of new evidence: my app is missing from both the App Store search index and the Apple Search Ads campaign-creation index.
Setup
- App: ZenTerm (App ID
6760935103, Bundle IDcom.zenterm.mobile) - Developer: Individual (Japan)
- Released: 2026-03-31 (live for 45 days)
- Status: Ready for Sale, 1.3.2 live (released 2026-05-06)
- App name: pure ASCII, coined word, no other apps share the name
Symptoms
| App Store app, search "zenterm" (exact name) | Zero results, 38 days running |
iTunes Search API (https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=zenterm&country=jp) | Returns my app correctly |
| Direct App Store URL | Opens product page normally |
| Apple Search Ads — search by app name | Zero candidates |
| Apple Search Ads — paste canonical App Store URL | Zero candidates |
The absence from both the App Store search index and the Apple Search Ads selection index is the key new finding. Since these run on separate infrastructure, the issue cannot be attributed to ranking, keyword suppression for a single field, or category-level competition — it indicates the app is missing from a more fundamental application-index layer.
Apple's own documentation implies a silent violation flag
Apple Search Ads help, "If your app does not appear as a promotion option," lists 6 possible causes. After ruling out 5 of them as not applicable, only one remains: "App cannot be promoted on Apple Ads — advertising policy violation, App Store guideline violation, or placement unavailability."
So per Apple's own published documentation, a policy-violation flag is silently active on this app. Yet:
- No notification has ever been delivered to the developer about which guideline or policy is flagged
- No App Review communication in App Store Connect references this
- Apple Support refuses to disclose anything (see below)
Apple Support timeline
| 2026-04-11 | 1st written inquiry via developer.apple.com/contact | Templated reply 4 days later: "App Store charts and search results change regularly and we don't guarantee app placement." Misses the point — the issue isn't ranking, it's zero results for an exact-name match on a coined word. |
| 2026-04-14 | 2nd written inquiry, explicitly framing this as an indexing issue not a ranking issue | Ignored for 24 days |
| 2026-05-08 | Phone call to Apple Support | "We cannot provide any answer regarding this case." When asked if there's any path forward, agent confirmed: "We cannot answer." |
| 2026-05-08 | 3rd written inquiry (with Apple Search Ads evidence and cross-reference to Apple's own help documentation indicating a silent policy-violation flag) | Ignored for 7 days as of today, despite Apple's stated SLA of "within 2 business days" on the contact form |
Self-remediation already attempted
Per public guidance that trademark keywords are the most common silent-suppression trigger, I proactively released version 1.3.2 on 2026-05-06 with all third-party trademarks removed from the keywords field (Claude, Codex, Copilot, Mac mini, Raspberry Pi → replaced with generic alternatives). Description and other surfaces were also reviewed for trademark density.
The Apple Search Ads diagnostic above was performed after this remediation. The app is still missing.
What I'm looking for from this forum
- Anyone who has had this resolved: by what mechanism? (DTS Incident, Organization-account migration, escalation contact, reindex after specific change, etc.)
- Anyone willing to corroborate the same symptoms: especially the Apple Search Ads selection-index absence, which seems to be the strongest evidence that this is a backend infrastructure problem rather than a metadata problem
- Apple staff: please escalate to the App Store search infrastructure team and/or the Apple Search Ads team to reconcile the indexes for this Bundle ID, or at minimum disclose the specific policy violation flag you have on this app so the developer can address it
Related thread
Thread #815203 ("Brutal Time - App not appearing in App Store search") documents an identical symptom set, unresolved for 6+ weeks despite multiple inquiries and engineering-callback promises. I've added a follow-up reply there as well. The pattern is consistent enough that this should be treated as a systemic issue, not isolated cases.