There are around 50 factors that we’ve discovered that contribute to app store rankings. Google Play takes 70 factors into account in its app ranking algorithm.
Top App Ranking Factors That Are Common For App Store and Google Play
- Engagement
- Retention
- Description
- CTR
Google Play Store Ranking Factor
- Android Vitals
- Backlinks (For Initial DIscovery of the Keyword)
- Ads (For Initial Discovery of Keyword)
- Ratings – because it directly influences CTR.
Google Play Factors For Mobile App Rankings
- Reviews (Until 2017) adding initial keyword set in review data – may help you get initial visibility, but it didn’t help with mobile apps ranking. However, post 2017, we have not seen a positive correlation between adding new keywords and their rank movement or visibility.
Apple App Store Rankings Further Depend on the 100 character keyword slot. This is one of the key differences between the app store vs google play store. Ios app store rankings are primarily dependent on this for initial discovery whereas android ranking is primarily dependent on the description. However, for ranking apps – beyond initial visibility, both Google and Apple take into various other factors.
Does the availability of an App on Both Stores Matter?
No, your app ranks won’t improve for a specific keyword – just because it’s available on the app store and google play.
How to Get Your App In Top Charts of Google?
At the time of writing this – download velocity is the top indicator for Google Play’s top charts. In order to view top charts on Google – you can follow this link. Be sure to replace Game with whatever category you’d like to search the top chart for. This link only works on Desktop.
The more the downloads – the higher the category – these installs can come from anywhere – paid ads, ASO, affiliate campaigns, etc.
We do provide app store rankings by category – but at the time of writing – it’s only available via API. You can log in to our ASO Tool Console and request us for the same.
Checking Your App Rankings
We do have a keyword tracking add-on – from where you can track both google play store app rankings as well as apple store rankings. You can also explore our free ASO tools console.
App Store Ranking Manipulation – Does it Work?
Ideally, both Google & Apple wants you to just update your listing and do some on-page ASO. However, this is very limited in nature. What you are – and should be looking at – is going beyond it. For instance, we’ve seen that engagement data is very valuable for ranking. You can choose any app ranking service. And yes, we do provide such a service.
How to Get Competitor’s App Engagement, Download & Retention Data
Some top mobile app intelligence companies do maintain that data. Yes, we too do collect and maintain that data – however we only share it with our clients – on request.
