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    Apple Says it Will Boot Developers Who Manipulate App Store Rankings [VIDEO]

    By Alissa Skelton | Mashable – Tue, Feb 7, 2012

    Apple says it will not tolerate manipulation of App Store rankings even if a third-party service is responsible for doing the dirty work.

    [More from Mashable: How One Pioneering Investor Kick-Starts Early Stage Companies [VIDEO]]

    Making it to the top of the charts is tough, considering more than 500,000 apps are available for download. Apple knows app developers pay third-party services to increase app rankings and some of them have wiggled apps into Apple's top 25 most-downloaded chart through illegal methods.

    "Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts," Apple warned developers Monday on its site. "Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership."

    [More from Mashable: Apple Faces Possible $38 Million Fine for Using the Term ‘iPad’ in China]

    SEE ALSO: 8 Best Practices for Deploying a Top-Ranked Mobile App

    The New York Times Bits blog wrote about a Walter Kaman's post on Touch Arcade's forum. The programmer said he found a $5,000 service promising to push his app to the top of Apple's most-downloaded list by using software "bots" that download an app repeatedly until its rating reaches the top 25 list. The man behind the fraudulent service showed Kaman eight of its clients who were all on the top 25 list through bot downloads. Kaman says he didn't pay for the service he called "the biggest fraud ever."

    "It's really disheartening to know that Apple is aware of this issue, but yet, they still allow these 8 apps on the App Store to use bots," Kaman wrote on the forum. "For all these time that I've been working hard at developing my app, I am very disappointed to know that these 8 other apps are getting insane exposure on the app store by paying a mere $5,000."

    Watch the video above to learn more, and tell us what you think about Apple's warning to app developers in the comments below.

    This story originally published on Mashable here.

     

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