Sarah Perez at Techcrunch, has a great post on a new kind of problem many users have on their smartphone [btw thanks Sarah for using a screenshot of one of our apps ] . What we call internally “App Re-discovery”: you download so many apps you can’t remember where they are (folder) or even what they’re called and you need to find them again.

Sarah suggests a better smartphone search engine that would index in a more relevant manner those apps. eg: you search “deals” you get groupon and Living Social

She also mention that smartphones require a better app management system

So here’s a crazy idea: give our devices a real search engine – one that’s as powerful as the app store’s engine, if not better. Apps should be keyword-optimized, ranked and rated by dozens of signals. The on-device app search engine should know what apps you have installed, how often you use them, how long you’ve had them, when you bought them, their ratings, your ratings, which of your friends use them, and everything the apps can and can’t do. For starters.

She’s right all the way. This is required and maybe apple or google will build this. But we saw with music that itunes even with ping has not gotten even close to that. Apple recently introduced a “purchased” section which allows you to better view what you have downloaded. But you don’t get more visibility than that and quite frankly this is not really helpful.

The reality is that this is a very hard problem to solve. Discovery like Re-discovery are not only related to how a search engine is built but also to how data about your apps are collected AND structured and presented. We spent 100% of our time trying to solve this and we don’t believe we’re there yet (although we think we re on the way)

Search is only one dimension to approach discovery. We observe on our own properties but also talking to some other players that only 30% of users find their app by using search. On the device it is very likely you use spotlight to find apps you don’t regularly use and that end up in your second or third homescreen. But there is also a better and smarter solution.

Here is what we learned for the past two years and that developers can already leverage today:

1. Users on mobile are not big fan of search: they much prefer the “browsing” model because it’s faster, simpler and does not require any input. You can see that in news (flipboard, pulse), but also with apps (browsing the lists or rankings). This is also why we made the choice to organize our apps by streams we build around relevant context (your friends, location, price drop, tastes,…). So build your app considering your going to be mostly found like this: great icon, great title, great screenshots. The icon in particular we’ll help you a lot in the rediscovery process because on mobile everything is more visual than textual.

2. Search in itunes AND spotlight are already built to work with keywords: if you are an app developer, it is critical you add the right keywords in your metadata. For example many apps that are not called “photo something” come out when i search photo. Apple or Google can’t solve that alone: they need the developer’s input. Add keywords where you can but in particular in your app title eg: BALAGRAM - photo utility for your phone instead of BALAGRAM (check LiveShare as an example)

3. Build a relation with users: too many developers think that once your app is installed on a device the job is done. You can only get attention on the device if you constantly capture this attention. And the best way to do it beyond building a great app is by creating a real relation with your users. An app should not be different from a web site in the sense that you need to keep your users informed, engaged and happy: build a notification channel, use push notification (optin of course) or newsletters, get a real feedback system in your app, animate your app..

Many apps struggle with that part and use the app update notes to do that. that is plain wrong. no one read update notes. It is easy to do better [we introduced a solution for that in private beta]

Rediscovery is going to be a more visible marketing problem in the next months. A whole generation of users are consuming apps more and more. Up until now, it was a manageable pain. But it will be less and less so.

Now there is something search is not good at today and there is no one single company who created this dimension (for now): in-app search

Sarah’s idea is to suggest that app search should be made possible thanks to a better indexing of the app metadata. But there is more. Imagine a meta-search engine that tells you in which of your native apps you can find the info you need: eg search “Ghost Protocol” and the engine will answer you that results are available in IMDB app, Allocine app that you own and in RunPee app that you don’t own. You don’t even need to know which app is good for that query.

Yes, you would not even need to know which app you need. The smart search engine would actually tell you which app you have or have not and point you right to the page result in the app

What a great experience it would be. This is incredibly hard to build and even google is not even close to that.

In the meantime, use the tips above and you should already feel better