A VPN Won't Help You Get on TikTok, But That's Not Stopping the Downloads!

TikTok's ban went into effect a few hours ago which means it was completely removed from the App Store and Google Play, but also blocked from letting users who already have the app log in.

This isn't the first time a popular app is banned in a specific country so many "knew" what to do - go through a VPN. A VPN lets you pretend you're in a different country which usually fools such blocks (just ask Netflix...)

But not this time! See, TikTok knows a lot about its users, more than the average service, and disabled access to all American accounts regardless of where they're logging in from.

That isn't stopping thousands of users from downloading VPN apps:

Right now, 3 of the top 10 apps in the US App Store are VPNs. 7 when we look at the top 50. All saw downloads rise as soon as TikTok was banned, and all rose sharply quickly indicating a surge of downloads.

Brandless VPN - Super Unlimited Proxy is currently at the lead, ranking 3 in the App Store's Top Apps chart in the US. The chart ranks apps by downloads and the speed at which the downloads are happening. Over the last 36 hours, its rank changed from 91 to 3 - that's a lot of downloads!

Another brandless provider by the name of VPN - Fast VPN Super is right below it, having climbed 155 spots in the last 36 hours according to our hourly rank tracker.

Nord VPN, the VPN you've probably heard of from your favorite YouTuber and the first reputable provider, ranks 9th right now, having climbed 160 spots!

X-VPN, Proton VPN, Free VPN .org, and Express VPN all rose hundreds of spots overnight.

For you devs out there - The keyword "VPN" has a popularity score of 86 which is really high and guess who's the top search results. Yes, both brandless apps that rose the most in ranks (check in Keyword Inspector). If you aren't spending time on your App Store Optimization you'll lose out on overnight trends like this one.