Mobile app discovery platform Xyologic launches its Android app search engine in closed beta

Xyologic, an online service for discovering mobile apps, has today announced the closed beta release of its new Android app search engine.

The Berlin-based startup was founded in October 2010, and it says that it’s setting out to offer users a new type of mobile app exploration experience. This follows on from an “undisclosed investment round” from Rick Thompson’s Signia Venture Partners, Klaas Kersting and Eric Wahlforss (from SoundCloud fame).

For the past eighteen months, Xyologic has been gathering data relating to how users search for apps, including the queries they make and other related search behavior. Underpinned by these findings, Xyologic has built a pretty powerful mobile app search engine, one which understands what it calls “vaguely expressed” user queries.

Xyologic’s natural app category technology identifies more than 700 app and 100 game genres. Xyologic devised a formula that puts some of the best undiscovered apps on top of the search result rankings, and users can see the ‘quality’ of an app at a glance.

So, what do they hope to achieve with this new Android app search engine? “We don’t claim to ‘solve’ any of the big issues of our industry,” says Xyologic co-founder Zoe Adamovicz. “But we believe we have some new, better answers. We are releasing our service in Closed Beta to show some of the work we have done so far, get feedback and continue our work.”

“Mainstream smartphone users understand that apps let them do great things on their phones and tablets, however most don’t know what their options are,” adds Matthaus Krzykowski, one of Xyologic other co-founders. “Less than 5% of mobile app searches include searches for app brands like Zynga or Angry Birds. Over 80% of all users put app and game genres like ‘puzzle games’ or ‘music’ into the search box. They are curious, obviously, and this is how they express their curiosity.”

Whilst it’s in closed beta, you will be able to request an invite to test out the engine.

➤ Xyologic