How to check where your app ranks for a keyword

Most people find apps by typing a few words into the store’s search box. Where your app appears for those words decides how many of them ever see it: the apps at the top get most of the taps, and few people scroll far.

So the question “where do I rank?” matters. Here is how to answer it by hand, why the answer changes from one phone to the next, and how to keep track without doing it every morning.

Check a ranking by hand

1. 1

   Pick the country

   Rankings are different in every country. The App Store and Google Play show you the store of your own account, so you see your home ranking, not the one in the country you care about.

2. 2

   Search the exact words

   Type the keyword the way a user would: “habit tracker”, not “habit-tracking application”. Small changes give different results, so write down the exact wording.

3. 3

   Count down to your app

   Skip the ad at the top, then count. Your position is the number of apps above yours, plus one. On the App Store, stories and bundles in the results are not apps: do not count them.

4. 4

   Write it down with the date

   One number tells you little. What matters is whether it moves after you change your title, ship an update or a competitor launches.

Why your phone does not tell the whole truth

• Country. A keyword where you are third in the United States can be thirtieth in Germany.
• Your own history. Google Play in particular shows results shaped by the account that is searching. Apps you already installed can be placed differently.
• Device. iPhone and iPad results differ, and so do phones and tablets on Google Play.
• Time. Positions move through the day. A check at nine and a check at five can disagree by a place or two.

Which keywords to watch

You do not need hundreds. Ten to thirty well-chosen keywords tell you more than a long list you never read. A good set has three kinds:

• What your app is. The two or three plain words for it: “habit tracker”, “budget planner”.
• What it does for someone. The problem in the user’s words: “quit sugar”, “split bills”.
• Longer, narrower searches. Three or four words with less competition: “habit tracker for adhd”. A new app can reach the top ten here long before it can for the short ones.

About search volume

Neither Apple nor Google publishes how many people search for a keyword. Any “search volume” you see in a tool is that tool’s own estimate, built in its own way. Instead of a guessed number, IndieTower gives you two signs you can check yourself: whether the store’s own suggestions list the keyword, and how hard its top ten looks, from the ratings of the apps already there.

Track it automatically

In IndieTower, open Keywords, add a keyword for a store and a country, and it is searched at once. After that it is checked once a day, and you see the position of your app, its change, a line for the last week and which app is first now. The positions come from the stores’ public search results, so they can differ by a place or two from the app on your phone.

A free account tracks 1 keyword so you can see how it works. The Indie plan tracks 50 with 90 days of history. How keyword tracking works.