Judging from the sheer number of "ASO" companies that contacted me the week I put out an app on the store, I believe that the main problem is mainly really bad spam control.

Yeah, companies frequently put their competitors' names in their keywords. Not going to name any names, but it's particularly bad in the ride sharing industry.

How can you put iMovie above Spotify in a search results for "music" without putting your thumb on the ranker?

Play Store search is also (still) notoriously bad. Even if it is a 1:1 hit, it does not show that as first entry. And it is full with malware.

The advantage to using Google Play is that apps containing ads are clearly labelled as such. Apple won't tell you this in advance. (This was my biggest surprise, recently switching from Android after the CopperheadOS meltdown)

Honestly I care less about ads and more about trackers.

Google Play says nada about trackers. Exodus project (and therefore F-Droid) does.

If you come from CopperheadOS I can recommend /e/ or LineageOS + microG (/e/ also contains microG). microG does not implement GAds. You will still need to block trackers though.

I agree with you about the trackers, but I just assume ads=tracking. I cannot see any app marketplace saying their apps contain tracking in the main description (it's always buried in the fine print).

My understanding is that GrapheneOS[0] is the successor to CopperheadOS, and I think that's what I'll try next. There isn't an Exodus Privacy or F-Droid for iOS and these are sorely missed.

[0]https://grapheneos.org/

Holy crap, how have I never heard of microG? Thank you!

Does the iOS App Store mention if an app uses trackers?

Nope. I would expect it to be difficult to analyze for that, at least with the amount of effort Apple is currently putting into App Store review.

Note how this doesn't affect apples own apps?