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How to get promoted on the ConnectIQ "Recommended" section?

Dr House
2 months ago

Currently I see (at least in my area) there are only two apps, and of course I wish mine was there too.

But didn't found any information on "promotion rules". How to get into the top of a category, how to advance, what features the algorithm prioritizes. It's crowdy place, mainly thanks to unlimited clones. And now I saw even Garmin is competing in the store with other watchfaces developers, which is not encouraging.

Apps who were there for years, are constantly on top making no room for new ones which makes it impossible to innovate and keeps user expectations unchanged.

Sometimes I see low-stats watchfaces higher, more visible than mine, so I whish I knew what I did wrong and how can I improve, but such information seems to be not available.

Please help if you know some sources for that subject.

  • 2 months ago in reply to Dr House

    What's more curious is that all these actually got approved, which in the docs is presented as a process that involves humans:

    After you upload your app successfully, we will review it.

    That is there's someone on Garmin side's clicking "approve" button for all this junk.

  • 2 months ago in reply to eau_de_vie

    True, looks like this all ConnectIQ store has some "special" exceptions, while you, as a regular dev, struggle to get inside and be noticed at all.

    New devs: think twice if you want to write something for Garmin - you are playing game you can't win, competing with  spammers whose existence Garmin understandingly supports taking their so called "apps" higher than others.

    If I was Police officer, I would follow payment path. Sometimes in such cases, there maybe some criminal activity involved with money laundering on a massive scale.

  • 2 months ago in reply to Dr House

    I agree that the spam sucks (and I've been very critical of it), but rather than imagining some nefarious criminal underworld conspiracy to launder a handful of pennies through the Connect IQ store (through apps which largely have 0 reviews and install counts in the single, double or triple digits *), I think the simpler explanation is that ppl figured out how to game the system and Garmin simply doesn't care (in the sense that they're not willing to allocate the resources to do anything about it.)

    (* I'm not a criminal mastermind, but it seems to me that most money laundering goes through high-volume businesses, not obscure app stores for niche devices where the average developer is happy to get donations for beer money.)

  • 2 months ago in reply to FlowState

    3000 the same watchfaces with the same stats, updated in a minute by the same clown.

    Nothing to worry about. Garmin obviously loves him more than honest devs.

  • 2 months ago in reply to Dr House

    Write and publish a data field.  Is that any easier to find than your watch face in any category?  I don't see a flood of data fields.

  • 2 months ago

    The IQ Store's new dial is ranked according to certain rules, and this ranking includes the top ranking of new apps and the release time of new apps. Those identical dial is to take advantage of this rule, and continue to release the same content, so as to achieve the purpose of crowding out ordinary developers. A few years ago, a new app launched would survive on the list for about seven days, now it's barely a day or two. Your app will still have the "New" tag on it and will still be protected for beginners, but since the overall number of apps on this list is limited, it's bound to show only the most recent and most downloaded apps during this period. Unless Garmin changes its publishing rules, each account can only publish a fixed number of apps or pass other restrictions. Otherwise, it's only gonna get worse.

  • 2 months ago

    I just made a "bug report" on this subject.

    https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/i/bug-reports/the-store-is-being-decimated-by-a-handful-of-developers-spamming-low-effort-apps

    Go and upvote it if you agree that the Store needs fixing.

    Triggered by this post on /r/Garmin.

  • 2 months ago

    This makes me upset too. I've reported many of such "garbage dump" watch faces as Spam and violating the terms of service. But Garmin replied me saying they're not spam and closed my case. 

  • 2 months ago in reply to Aaron

    I didn't even get response once. I'm starting to think Garmin hates its own devs.

    It's quite logical. They are now trying to sell their own apps, watchfaces and it's obviously conflict of interest.

    That's why you can see some Garmin watchfaces in "Recommended" section all the time. And there are not clear rules how to get there.

    They should finally decide - they want honest devs and support them or hate them.