I'm facing a bit of a frustrating situation with search rankings which I'm hoping some people here might have some advice on; at the very least maybe this will contribute to the ongoing analysis of App Store keyword searches.
My app is generally doing very well - second most downloaded free app of its type (make my money through in-app purchases), far and away the highest grossing, 4 star average review - but for some reason it's stuck in the mid 20s in the results for the most common search term for what it does, behind lots of other apps with fewer downloads / poorer reviews / lower revenues / etc. I've put that search term right in the app title but it hasn't helped matters. So I've been running through other factors that might cause Apple to bury it in the results:
Parental Controls: it used to be a 17+, but I tweaked it to get a 12+ rating; this didn't help
Paid versus free: several higher ranked apps are free apps with fewer downloads
Penalty for being a free app offering in-app purchases: several of those higher-ranked free apps do the same thing
OS compatibility: Universal and multitasking / iOS4, which several other higher-ranked free apps aren't
Frequent updates: mine are more frequent than my competitors', and no spike detected after releasing updates
In fact, I've eliminated every option I can think of except four, and I'm wondering if anybody else has noticed any of these having an impact on search results.
Release date: while some of the higher-ranked paid apps were originally released after mine, none of the higher-ranked free ones were; do apps that have been in the store longer get ranked higher in search results simply on the basis of their release date? (my app's been out for 6+ months, so this isn't a newly-released app problem)
Total Downloads: related to the above, some of the apps above me have been out for a year-and-a-half or more, so even if they're getting downloads at a lower rate now they may have still accumulated more in total. Though this is probably impossible to separate from the release date.
Number of apps: I only publish the one, while all of the free apps ranked above mine are from companies that have published several (all of which hit on the same keywords); do companies that have released multiple apps get a bonus in search results?
Apple bias: the far-out conspiracy-theory one: is there any possibility that Apple's reviewers might have for whatever reason decided they simply didn't like my app as much as those of my competitors', and somehow punished me in the search results because of that?
I'm facing a bit of a frustrating situation with search rankings which I'm hoping some people here might have some advice on; at the very least maybe this will contribute to the ongoing analysis of App Store keyword searches.
My app is generally doing very well - second most downloaded free app of its type (make my money through in-app purchases), far and away the highest grossing, 4 star average review - but for some reason it's stuck in the mid 20s in the results for the most common search term for what it does, behind lots of other apps with fewer downloads / poorer reviews / lower revenues / etc. I've put that search term right in the app title but it hasn't helped matters. So I've been running through other factors that might cause Apple to bury it in the results:
Parental Controls: it used to be a 17+, but I tweaked it to get a 12+ rating; this didn't help
Paid versus free: several higher ranked apps are free apps with fewer downloads
Penalty for being a free app offering in-app purchases: several of those higher-ranked free apps do the same thing
OS compatibility: Universal and multitasking / iOS4, which several other higher-ranked free apps aren't
Frequent updates: mine are more frequent than my competitors', and no spike detected after releasing updates
In fact, I've eliminated every option I can think of except four, and I'm wondering if anybody else has noticed any of these having an impact on search results.
Release date: while some of the higher-ranked paid apps were originally released after mine, none of the higher-ranked free ones were; do apps that have been in the store longer get ranked higher in search results simply on the basis of their release date? (my app's been out for 6+ months, so this isn't a newly-released app problem)
Total Downloads: related to the above, some of the apps above me have been out for a year-and-a-half or more, so even if they're getting downloads at a lower rate now they may have still accumulated more in total. Though this is probably impossible to separate from the release date.
Number of apps: I only publish the one, while all of the free apps ranked above mine are from companies that have published several (all of which hit on the same keywords); do companies that have released multiple apps get a bonus in search results?
Apple bias: the far-out conspiracy-theory one: is there any possibility that Apple's reviewers might have for whatever reason decided they simply didn't like my app as much as those of my competitors', and somehow punished me in the search results because of that?
Thanks for any insights you can offer.
From my experience paid apps get priority over free ones in the search rankings (ie you need a LOT more downloads of the free app to surpass a paid app). Also the name of the app matters a TON. I am actually in the process of changing the name of my app. I have a fantasy football app and I noticed that some of the top results have the phrase "fantasy football" in the title.
The best search optimization imo is TITLE optimization.
Obscure reasons for a low search ranking?
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