I am looking for some advice on how to go about getting reviews for apps on the app store. I have been using this Previous Answer for a reference
At the minute I am testing the system using the following url (Instagram):
https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=389801252/json
Problem is that sometimes it produces reviews and other times it doesn't. Does anyone have any idea why this may be, I don't think I am being rate limited because I can use other ids and the results are being fetched fine.
Any suggestions or advice on an alternative method would be great.
I am developing a tool so I could really do with consistent results.
Thanks
Answer
I experienced this behaviour also. It feels as if Apple's server decides whether to send reviews by rolling dice. That said, I think you can increase chances to be accepted by adhere to the following points:
- Include a 'page' parameter, even if you request the first page. (
...customerreviews/page=1/...) - Include a 'sortBy' parameter (
...id=12345/sortBy=mostRecent/json) - Request XML instead of JSON (
...id=12345/xml) - When requesting the second or any other page up to 10th, make sure you take the url as provided in the
<link rel="next" href="...">tag
The server will still occasionally send empty feeds. I will file a radar on this soon.