Non-Customer Reviews Erased from App Store

Non-Customer Reviews Erased from App Store

Potentially fake reviews — written by people who didn’t buy or download the app — were recently removed from the app store on iTunes.

When the app store launched in 2008, you could review the app even if you didn’t buy it. As a result there were a lot of static reviews, both good and bad, as companies tried to push their products or topple competitors.

In September, Apple announced a ban on non-customer reviews from the apps, but the old reviews were still visible.

Until a few days ago, when the slate was wiped clean. The move seems to have removed some of the static: SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball review count dropped from 4,197 to 3,710 while Namco’s Pac Man reviews shrunk from 395 to just 122.

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Via mac rumors, readwriteweb

About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on Twitter , Facebook and Google+.

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Posted in iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch, iTunes | Tagged: , , |

  • accolon

    Why are people writing for the “Cult of Mac” using Windows Vista? ;-)

  • Duality

    A great move. There’s so many trashy reviews on the App Store nowdays that it’s almost not worth reading them. Most are stuff like “THIS ISNT A FART APP SO I DONT LIKE IT, 1 STAR” and whatnot.

  • Lucas

    good. what good is a review by someone that hasn’t seen the program.

    now if they can dump all reviews by folks that use the ‘was this review helpful’ as a polling tool. such as ‘the jonas brothers are the hottest, click yes if you agree’