More Than 25% of Top iOS Apps Will Soon Need to Change Their Names

Apple announced two more upcoming changes to the developer side of the App Store today. In particular, the company revealed that it will be pruning abandoned apps beginning on September 7 to keep the store curated and maintain a quality user experience. It's a common sense measure that will become increasingly important as the store makes its way towards five million apps by 2020.

Secondly—and more importantly to most publishers—Apple announced that it will be reducing the number of characters allowed in app names from 255 to 50 characters, also as of September 7. In addition, app names will not be allowed to "include terms or descriptions that are not the name of the app," according to Apple's new submission guidelines. So, in effect, publishers will no longer be able to utilize descriptive taglines for their apps.

The company noted that the change is happening because "long names are not fully displayed on the App Store and provide no user value."

The long app names Apple mentioned include ones like this listing from Apartments.com, which is more than 200 characters in length:

Looking at the apps in Apple's Top Charts today, we can see just how many developers will be affected in terms of app name length—not including the new rule concerning descriptive terms.

Of the top 1,500 free apps on the U.S. App Store today, 27 percent have names that exceed 50 characters. In the top paid and top grossing sections, 21 and 23 percent, respectively, will need to at least shorten their names come September 7.

Here are five of the top apps that currently do not meet Apple's new naming length requirements:

• Google Maps - Real-time navigation, traffic, transit, and nearby places

• Amazon App: shop, browse, scan, compare, and read reviews

• Hulu: Watch latest episodes of your favorite hit TV Shows, stream kids movies & comedy films

• Match - Dating App to Flirt, Chat and Meet Local Single Men and Women

• ESPN Fantasy Sports - Play Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey and More Games

Why This Change Is Being Made

Previously, the 255 character limit allowed developers to list their branded app name as well as a tagline such as: "Tickets & Presale Access for Upcoming Concerts & Live Music Events." Developers could use this tagline to pitch users on the benefits of their apps and also to place choice keywords in the title—but no more.

The app name field has long been the most highly weighted element of Apple's search algorithm. Adding keywords to the title helped many publishers improve their searching ranking for any keyword or phrase that made its way into the title.

However, as Apple mentioned in its announcement today, some developers took this too far, creating spammy app titles that read more like a comma separated list than a true marketing tagline. Apple's App Store review team has been in charge of screening these apps manually in the past, but as you can see with the Apartments.com listing above, some apps clearly passed through the manual human review process.

What This Means for Developers

This upcoming change is significant for everyone who has—or plans to have—an app on the store; it will affect the largest publishers as well as independent developers. Adding some form of a tasteful tagline had become a best practice in App Store Optimization.

For instance, both Google and Amazon have titles that wouldn't be approved by Apple if the change were to take place today:

These apps would need to be retitled to "Google Maps" and "Amazon App", respectively, to be completely in accordance with the new guidelines.

Many publishers will no doubt choose to test the waters by first ensuring that their app names fall within the new 50 character limit while still adding descriptive terms—something that will likely be manually reviewed during the submission process. We expect that there will be some growing (or shrinking) pains as Apple and publishers come to grips with the new guidelines. Descriptive terms will likely make the cut in some cases, but not in others, and debates will inevitably arise as to what exactly constitutes a tagline versus an app name.

We'll update with the latest after the change takes effect later this month.