iTunes Digital Comic Searches Now More Useful

Back in the early days of searching for iOS comics on iTunes, if a user wanted to find a specific title their options were limited. Provided a comic was sold as an individual app -- which was commonplace before the rise of comiXology, iVerse, Panelfly, Graphic.ly and others' digital stores -- a regular search would work just fine. If a user unfamiliar with in-app digital comics retailers were to search for a title without its own app solely through iTunes, however, they'd be more or less out of luck. As reported by ICv2, however, that's changed. Now users who search for a specific title via iTunes are directed to applicable in-app digital comics retailers in addition to old school individual comic apps. Nice!The new search system isn't necessarily perfected. After all, it's still up to the searcher to download a digital comics app and navigate its interface themselves, but it's a nice advancement that's intuitive enough for potential newcomers.

The change isn't without some problems, though. Brigid Alverson broke down one major downside over at Robot 6:

...the double search means that bad results are a bigger headache. Checking to see if scanlations linked to by bootleg manga apps were included in the search results (they aren't), I searched for "Fairy Tail," the name of a Kodansha manga, knowing that it is not available digitally. ComiXology turned up as the first search result, but of course (I double-checked), Fairy Tail isn't included in comiXology. I'm sure there are comics with the words "fairy" and "tail" in their titles in the comiXology roster, and the result is that the user is led on a frustrating wild goose chase.

Another problem? It'll be just a bit more difficult for we at CA to use basic iTunes searches to find woefully unlicensed bootleg superhero iOS apps to make fun of.

[Via ICv2]