Hello,
I'm a solo developer with three live apps and five new games that were waiting for their first review. I'd like to understand whether an App Review decision on pending apps can influence how a live app is surfaced in the App Store.
What happened:
Oct 2: 335 impressions / 169 product page views / 68 first-time downloads Oct 3: 222 / 116 / 33 Oct 4: 506 / 243 / 71 Oct 5: 530 / 239 / 72 Oct 6: 163 / 44 / 9
- Before Oct 2 the app had roughly 10-50 Browse impressions a day, so it had clearly been picked up by some browse surface. The Page Type breakdown shows most of these impressions as "No Page", i.e. the app was shown in lists inside the store, not reached through outside links.
- On Oct 6 at 02:17 UTC all five of my pending apps received the same rejection in the same minute (Guidelines 4.3 - Spam and 4.2.6). I have answered the questions in the Resolution Center and I am not asking the forum to revisit that decision.
- On the same day Browse impressions of the live app dropped by about 70% in all major storefronts at once (US, Japan, UK, Canada). App Store Search was unchanged (437 impressions and 10 downloads on Oct 6, in line with the days before). The app's metadata, price and availability did not change and no new version was released.
My questions:
- Can a 4.3 rejection of other, unreleased apps affect the eligibility of a live app from the same developer account for browse surfaces (recommendations, lists, charts)?
- Is there a way to see in App Store Connect which browse surface produced the impressions (Today, Games or Apps tab, "You Might Also Like", charts...)? As far as I can see, "App Store Browse" cannot be broken down further in Analytics.
- If visibility is limited while an account has unresolved review issues, is it restored automatically once they are resolved?
I understand that ranking details are not public, even a pointer to the right contact or documentation would help. Thank you.