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I have an app that's been out for a couple of weeks. Its not exactly selling like hot cakes yet, but I'm pretty sure I've gotten a rating or a review by now. But nothing shows when viewing either in iTunes or directly on the AppStore on the iPhone.

Is there a standard delay as to when ratings/reviews show up, that Apple imposes, especially for new apps? Or do you think there is some problem with Apple's system?

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My experience is there is a fairly big delay in reviews showing up - but I would expect even the first review to get published within a month of posting should other ratings and reviews arrive for that app to separate it from an app that has less than 100 downloads ever.

I don't know for sure, but the ratings seem to be held back until 10 or 20 are submitted. Once you reach that limit the store will show the overall rating and only new versions get ratings once they hit their threshold (but a message stating not enough ratings are in to show).

It makes sense for users to expect a few points before any app gets zero or five stars and makes the ratings a useful measure that some handful of people expressed an opinion before they are shown.

After hearing about the delays, I've sometimes checked and my experience with about 50 reviews where I cared to check back, the shortest time was about 24 hours and the longest was 2 weeks for a review to appear. I've not had one not eventually get published, but I also don't generally review apps that have hundreds of reviews which is much harder to find your needle in the haystack of other reviews. I generally star those apps or write something and not bother to check if it ever made it live.

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From a users standpoint, you only see reviews from the app store/country you are logged into. I have accounts on the China, US and NZ app stores, and notice significantly more reviews on the American and Chinese sites than the NZ one (unsurprisingly I might add). Perhaps you are logged in to an app store with less users/less likely to have reviews?

Maybe you can link us to you app so we can have a look at it. Good luck.

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All these answers seem well enough, but I've made shining, 5 star reviews in the past (in America, with games I've bought and am logged into) that have yet to appear. In the meantime, the illiterate smeghead who's dropped F-bombs every other word... he has 19 reviews showing, all made in the last 2 weeks.
I am more willing to believe that they're just waiting for a grouping of reviews, rather than reviewing reviews for viewable content. It all seems disorganized to me. I don't think the employess hired to improve this process have any real idea what they're doing.

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  • yeah, it's really obnoxious to just not understand what is going on or how it's supposed to work. i would actually write more reviews if it didn't often seem to be a total waste of time. it makes sense to have an approval process, but at least with Amazon.com reviews, you get a notification when your review has gone live. i'm writing this because a review i did last night still hasn't shown up. i'm confused regarding whether or not i actually submitted it, or what. it had nothing controversial in it. what a pain in the ass. Nov 6, 2016 at 19:51
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I know that they wait for a set number of ratings before displaying, and I imagine that reviews are subject to moderation.

These things might be especially true for new apps/developers.

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