What causes app rank drop in search results?

LooseMooseLooseMoose Member Posts: 224
in Miscellaneous
I have a game called 'Rage Comics Race' and 3 days ago when I searched 'rage comics' it was ranked around 40 in results and since then I have got two 5 star reviews and now the result rank is around 100 when I search the same thing. My sales have not dropped either, they slightly increase every day.

So what causes search ranks to drop so significantly?

Thanks

Best Answer

  • MPCavMPCav Posts: 81
    Accepted Answer
    Here's what I have noticed from obsessively monitoring my chart position in AppAnnie:
    BTW the RANK HISTORY in AppAnnie is updated HOURLY. But remember if you watch this that you need to really look at your apps performance over days and weeks. Hourly reports can be a little erratic and hard to make sense of however this is what I know:

    If you are slowly ticking down the chart positions, it's because individual apps are jumping ahead of you in the charts.

    When lower down the charts, a single download can make a big difference to your chart position because a lot of apps lower in the charts will have the same number of downloads. The higher up you go, the wider this gap becomes.

    Your search ranking gets a boost for 7 days when you update your app. This literally cuts of dead after 7 days so if you have a highly contested name or highly contested tags, on your app will need to earn it's place at the top.

    If you suddenly dump in your chart position, it can be because one of your channels of app discovery has stopped working (i.e. those promotional forum posts have dropped to page 2, for example). Remember also that you need to make news which you can use to bump your forum posts, as some forums will ban you for blatantly bumping your app to the top of the list all of the time. A good way to do this is to add content, and make an update then post that the update is released.

    In the UK I can see that my app graph on a week day is flat until 9am, then it drops (I guess people are using news apps and more 'serious' stuff than free-quiz or SpaceOff) and then it picks up usually about 6pm when people get the bus, go home or whatever.

    Hope this is all useful stuff.

Answers

  • jimbo340jimbo340 Member Posts: 55
    More games added?
    Or maybe the other apps have higher reviews
  • LooseMooseLooseMoose Member Posts: 224
    edited January 2013
    Yeah I think those may be factors, but there are only 120 results so I find it weird I dropped to around position 100 from 40 after two 5 star reviews and increased sales.
  • jimbo340jimbo340 Member Posts: 55
    Strange. Why don't you ask apple help? :)
  • IcedBIcedB Member, PRO Posts: 384
    It's all related to keywords, number of downloads, and the keywords it pulls from your title. So if there are some big boys with comic in the title it may well considerable shift your game down the rankings.
  • Vision Strike Ware LLCVision Strike Ware LLC Member Posts: 86
    I'm very curious about ranking by platform also. I have the same description for a game that has about 350 downloads on Android and gets that many per day on Nook and iOS.
  • Team6LabsTeam6Labs Member Posts: 541
    My ranking changes on a daily basis, it's all about your downloads vs the downloads of someone ranked ahead or behind you.
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