Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!newsfeed.endofthelinebbs.com!usenet.blueworldhosting.com!diablo1.usenet.blueworldhosting.com!nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Andrew Newsgroups: comp.mobile.android Subject: Re: Why do people use the Google Play Store search engine? Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2024 16:40:44 -0000 (UTC) Organization: BWH Usenet Archive (https://usenet.blueworldhosting.com) Message-ID: References: <12el9a4awtvsm$.dlg@v.nguard.lh> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2024 16:40:44 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com; logging-data="934"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blueworldhosting.com" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0 SeaMonkey/2.53.13 Cancel-Lock: sha1:J9GeftrJWJ9bLtnBqxSjMXMpe7M= sha256:LMd+l+7sJpLPsR6nifJ1Stg3mVKtKMxQDKR0v3uqfdU= sha1:aKCiiALLk9isu/jEB/PdLrmoWD8= sha256:p3lJMRdhv94qz2nUisQX2fTrjZKrTe11F2v4chN8XlU= Bytes: 5000 Lines: 74 Frank Slootweg wrote on 2 Dec 2024 11:15:22 GMT : > Or stupid geofencing methods. Frank and Andy are correct that the Google Play Store search finds, oh, I don't know the percentage, but I've tested this hundreds of times, so let's say swag it's only about 75% of the apps that meet your search criteria. I know this because I extensively *tested* both the Aurora Store and the Skyica App Finder (working with both developers on the XDA forum). For now, it's a safe bet that the Google Play Store search misses about a quarter of the apps that actually completely meet your search criteria. But worse... far worse... there is no *filtering* (to speak of) in the Google Play Store app search mechanism. Google doesn't want that. For example, how would you search for only free apps with no ads but also no "upgrade" options and which are a score of 4.5 or better with over a million reviews and ... and... and... scores of useful filters. You can only do that with the Skyica App Finder (as far as I'm aware). Another example is how do you search for free apps that don't have the Google Services Framework embedded into them? You can't with the Google Play Store app (or web site). But you can with Aurora (although I haven't been able to convince the Skyica developer to include that search filter yet - but I'm trying). > For example I've had cases where I couldn't install Australia-centric > apps, because I was in The Netherlands and cases where I could not > install such apps while I *was* in Australia, because the country > settings of my Google Account were (obviously) set to The Netherlands > (IIRC, one example of the latter was the app of the Australian Bureau of > Meteorology). Go figure! Luckily with Aurora and Skyica you can spoof not only your platform, but your CPU and your location and the Android API levels, etc., aqain, none of which is available with the default crappy Google Play Store app search. > As you mentioned, in most cases the problem could be solved by getting > the APK from some APK archive site (I mostly used apkpure,com), After > installing the APK, updating the app often *could* be done by the Play > Store app. There's no way that will work because there are about 1/4 of all the apps in the Google Play Store repository that are NOT reported by the Google Play Store app (or web site) search - so you need to know the full package name (most of the time) to find that app on the APK archives. And why should you have to resort to APK archives anyway when the app is on the Google Play Store repository? Remember, about 1/4th of all apps on the Google Play Store repository (in my estimate) are NOT reported by your Google Play Store searches, and worse, the *filtering* on the Google Play Store app (or web site) is worthless (which is the best thing I can say about it). When you see the Skyica App Finder filters (or even the Aurora filters, which pale in comparison to Skyica's) you will *understand* those words. My main question is why do supposedly technically competent people put up with the Google Play Store search engine lack of results and lack of filtering of those results? Is it because they "think" the SKyica App Finder costs money (as VanguardLH said he "thinks" it does). It doesn't cost me a penny. Never has. Name: App-Finder-1.4.1a-U.apk Size: 4497432 bytes (4392 KiB) SHA256: 7075AFFE7593C03594DA6A1EB67AA955EBB2EE23FA28198FD49D5821602EC2B9