Re: Why do people use the Google Play Store search engine?

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.  <https://skyica.com/appfinder/get/>
 <https://skyica.com/appfinder/get/App-Finder-1.4.1a-U.apk>
 Name: App-Finder-1.4.1a-U.apk
 Size: 4497432 bytes (4392 KiB)
 SHA256: 7075AFFE7593C03594DA6A1EB67AA955EBB2EE23FA28198FD49D5821602EC2B9