I have 15+ yrs of App Marketing Knowledge.. Ask me Anything

Hello everyone. Welcome to a brand new live stream. I'm Ariel from Matt Figures.

What you're hearing behind me is not a lawn mower. It's a lot of construction that's happening. I tried with all my might to make it end. I tried to make the microphone not capture it as well. I tried to change my studio. None of that worked. So I just decided to get started.

I see there are a lot of questions in the chat already. I am behind. It's a weird morning. But we're going to get started and I'm going to use all the knowledge I have, my 15 plus years, actually 16 plus years, in mobile apps to answer your questions.

But before we do that, we can't do without tradition.

What's in Your Cup and Where Are You From?

What's in your cup and where are you from? I am here in very loud New York City drinking some Earl Grey tea. I did not have time to put mint in it, but usually I like to put mint in it.

The noise comes and goes, so hopefully it will just go and never come back. We'll see.

Someone's saying "use crisp" for the sound. I don't know what crisp is, but I will look it up when I have a few moments.

Also, my chair is too low. Let's fix that. Yeah, there we go.

So it's one of these mornings where I'm usually extremely prepared, and today I'm like 97.7% prepared. So bear with me. I got some tea, though. I have quite a bit of espresso in my cup. There's a lot of espresso in here. So I'm ready to go. I'm wired. And the noise comes and goes, so we should be good.

What's in your cup? Where are you from? I see water in the UK. I see Bangladesh. I see a lot going on. Awesome as always.

One day, I've been saying this for a while, but I'm going to make a map appear on the screen and you can see where everyone is from. We have that for the site and it shows where everyone is and it's just wonderful. I will do the same for this.

Ooh, a beer in Uganda. Interesting. Okay. What time is it there? What time is it here? 10:39. We're only 9 minutes behind. Could have been worse.

The noise severely subsided, I would say.

Water in Poland. Nice. No water in the bottle, need to refill. Go and refill. Water is so important for you.

What else do we have? Tea in Jersey. Green tea in Jersey. Nice. Jersey is like well tier.

All righty. So I think we're all in. I don't want to slow this any more than I have to. We're going to answer some questions.

I don't remember one time where I had so many questions already in the chat before I even started. Add the starting delay and everything is now much, much more exciting.

So let's get answering. That's the only way I can see it.

If you can't hear me well, please let me know. I made some changes to the microphone and I think it's a little bit lower than normal, mostly trying to make the noise go away, but hopefully that's working in some capacity. I'll just talk like this.

A lot of water. I like that you're all healthy. That's great. I mean tea is not too bad, but water is also very, very good.

Okay, so let's see. We have a lot of things. Where do I even begin? There are so many questions.

We'll begin at the beginning as one should.

Let me bring up questions on the screen and let's get started.

Question: Do Useless Keywords Hurt Existing Rankings?

Tony started really early. Well done, Tony, for coming in and just asking questions right out of the gate.

Tony is asking:

"Adding new keywords that you end up not ranking for, does it affect the previous keywords you were ranking for? Every keyword you fail to rank in for can affect the rest. Should you get rid of keywords that are not working for you?"

The answer is absolutely.

If you put a keyword into your name, your subtitle, your keyword list, your short description, your long description, whichever store you're on, and it doesn't do anything, it takes up space for something that could be doing something. So realistically, you don't really want to keep it in.

Now, is it really hurting you? Yes, kind of. It doesn't hurt you in a sense that Apple's not going to penalize you and Google's not going to penalize you for having a keyword that isn't useful.

But what will happen is:

1. It's going to take the space of something that is.
2. It's going to devalue everything else, because it's all about focus.

What you give the algorithm, whether it's Apple or Google, is what the algorithm is going to assign 100% of the value it can assign to you to. If you give it two keywords, that's 50/50. If you give it 100 keywords, each will get 1/100.

So you really have to focus on the things that work.

Not everything you try will work. So when you put something in and it doesn't work, take it out. Give it enough time because you don't want to rush it. Give it two, three, four weeks. If nothing happens, kick it out and put something else in.

That's why in the US, if you're optimizing on the App Store in the US, you want to use those sub-localizations that also get indexed in the US. What that does for you is it gives you more options to learn what's working and what's not working, and then you can potentially bring it into the US title, subtitle, and also your keyword list.

That's how I would do it.

Question: How Are Apple's Tags Working and How to Handle Misaligned Tags?

Brett is asking:

"How are you finding Apple's tags to be working? We're seeing mixed results, i.e. 'mileage tracker', 'driving' tag returning 'running mileage trackers'. How do you combat that through ASO strategy?"

You can't. Not for right now.

Ultimately, we don't know enough. And I think we don't know enough as the people using this, and Apple doesn't know enough as a company producing this.

We're still technically in beta. This is not available to the masses. It's all so, so new. We don't understand how Apple's using the AI to create these. We haven't seen enough examples of that data in the wild.

For right now, sit tight and see what happens.

I've said this in the past, in the last live stream and the one before it: I'm giving it about six months. So maybe a little bit before Christmas. That's not exactly six months, but we want to be ready for Christmas.

Around November, Black Friday-ish, that's when I'm going to sit down and look through all the data. I will look through it as we get to that point, but that's really where I think we'll have enough data to know:

• How are these tags generated?
• What are the heuristics that Apple's using?
• Do they actually have any real benefit?

One of the troubles is these are great for end users to find alternatives, ultimately, to apps. They're less about discovery from scratch or raw discovery and more about discovery of additional things — "what also fits".

To your question, Brett, this is problematic because it means that it's going to be a way for users to find something else. And if that something else is totally irrelevant, we don't really know what that will do to a user.

• Will they completely drop off?
• Will they look to see if that thing that is on the screen maybe also is the same, even though the name and the icon and everything else don't suggest it?

That's going to cause a ton of friction.

For right now, just watch it and see what's happening.

I imagine Apple will evolve this a ton over the next six months. If you've done any AI work, you know that none of this is straightforward. It's not linear code, and I imagine Apple knows this and will continue to refine until they get to a mode that they really like.

That's not going to happen in the next six months. So I foresee a ton of evolution for tags. I also see a ton of evolution for what tags mean and the way Apple does AI for keywords for custom product pages, which is seeing the exact same set of issues where the tags don't exactly align or the keywords that they generate don't exactly align.

That's going to be something we're obviously going to watch.

Please Like the Stream

Someone said they spent a good part of the last four days watching all of Ariel's previous streams and it was worth it. "The best in the game." Thank you for just saying that. Sometimes it's great to hear.

And also, if you also think that and you're on this live stream, please give this video a thumbs up. It definitely helps, especially now when I'm running around like a crazy person trying to mute construction noises.

Take a second and give it a like.

Question: Fastest ASO Wins in the First 30 Days for a New App

A question from Franklin, and this is kind of high level.

Franklin is asking:

"For a brand new app, what ASO tactics deliver the fastest visibility boost in the first 30 days?"

It might seem like a crazy question because what do you do? It's 30 days and you have nothing to show for.

What you do is keyword research. You really, really have to do that before you launch. And if you do that well before you launch, you will do really well.

Let me give you an example.

We were talking about mileage before. So let's take "mileage" as an example.

If you know your app is going to be a mileage tracker, you can go and look for all the mileage trackers and see what they're missing.

When I say "what they're missing", I don't mean features and I don't mean benefits. I mean: which keywords are opportunities? Which keywords are not being targeted?

If you're thinking about mileage trackers, you might think "mileage tracker" is the keyword. It might be, and it's probably big. But within your first 30 days, without any sort of additional marketing or outside-of-the-app-store advertising, you're not going to get a lot of visibility for something that other apps that have been pointing at it directly and pushing hard for a long time are getting.

You need to go after the keywords they're not pushing towards.

We have a tool called Competitor Keywords. With Competitor Keywords, you can see all the keywords that any app of your choice is ranking in.

What I do is I go from Keyword Inspector (which I was about to show) to find the top competitors in the space. Then I look for other keywords that they're not ranking in.

You see that by going through a bunch of apps and then you start seeing gaps in the table. Once you see those gaps, you know where to go. You start seeing that they're not optimizing for the same keywords.

They might be optimizing for a slightly different set, and that's your opportunity.

Between the noise and my mouse disappearing, this is a fun morning.

So between the keywords that they're not using or the keywords that are only being used a little bit, and the keywords that are getting all of the love, you should be able to find opportunities where someone is not actively optimizing, and you could.

That's really the key to what I would do if I needed to start with an app that's very, very new.

A very long-winded way of saying: my mouse ran out of batteries.

Question: Where to Spend a Small Ad Budget — Apple Ads, Social, or Content?

Franklin continued and asked:

"If I only have a small ad budget, where should I focus first? Apple ads, social ads, or content marketing?"

There is no single right answer. The answer is potentially all of the above. It really depends on your app specifically and on your audience.

Let me give you an example.

Apple ads are really good for something that people are searching for.

"Mileage tracker", as per our previous example, is something that people are coming into the App Store and searching for. We see that because it has a high popularity, or some variation with a high popularity.

But something like a book generator, or a tarot card app (which is surprising) may not be the kind of thing that you're actively thinking about and saying, "Let me go to the App Store to tell my fortune."

Instead, you would have to go elsewhere and put it in people's faces as a billboard in a sense.

So it depends on your app.

• If your app is something that people are coming into the App Store and already searching for (or Google Play), then yes, you should use Apple ads. That's probably the best way to do it.
• If it's something that people are not looking for, and you'll see that by the popularity score not being high or not a lot of keywords driving traffic, then you should go outside of the App Store.

That's usually TikTok these days. On TikTok, you can do ads or you can do content. That really depends on where you want to invest the money and the effort.

That's how I look at it when someone asks me that question.

Question: How to Market Seasonal Apps in Regions You Don't Live In

Ashley is asking:

"Targeting where you don't live. Working on a seasonal app — spring/summer. If I launch today, I would need to target the southern hemisphere. Underlying question: how to market unfamiliar regions?"

There's kind of a question and a half in one here.

Step number one: if you're targeting for a seasonal app, you have to know your seasons.

One of the easiest examples is a ski tracking app. If you have a ski tracking app, you know when the season is in every country or in every region. There's no reason not to target those regions, even if you don't live there, even if you don't speak the language.

What you have to understand is when it starts and when it ends. Those are the two most important pieces. And you have to make sure that the app also shows that you understand when it starts and when it ends.

I had a live stream a few years ago with someone who was talking about seasonality and how changing the icon just at the right time actually increased downloads, and not changing it back at the right time decreased downloads. Very interesting.

So step one is understand your seasons.

They might be a little bit different depending on the region and the country. A season like spring or summer, that's a little bit easier. A ski season could also relate to other factors: economic trends, politics (because of travel and tourism), etc.

As long as you understand those things, that's step number one.

Step number two is make sure you're in the local language.

We have translation on for all of our keyword reports. So any keyword that you see from a competitor in a different language, you can easily translate to yours, and if you like it, grab it and put it in your metadata.

We invented this because Ariel was helping people do ASO in Chinese. Ariel can kind of guess at other languages like Spanish, Italian, and German. Ariel cannot guess in Chinese.

So automation did everything.

All of our keywords will show you that.

Make sure you go after competitors in the local region, not US competitors and what they're doing in, let's say, China, Spain, Italy, or Australia if this is the case. Instead, go after the local competitors, the local winners for these keywords, see what they're doing, and then take that and use that.

One thing that trips up a lot of people is that in many countries, English keywords are still dominant.

A lot of apps are starting with localizing into English or they have all their metadata in English, which makes sense. It's the default for pretty much everything. But in many countries, apps, even the bigger apps, don't localize.

Apple and Google don't just invent words. They don't auto-translate (unless on the Google side you force them to). So for users in those countries, even if English is not the primary language, they're still going to have to look in English if they want to find things.

That adds friction and is problematic. You should localize, because in some countries, they just won't search in English.

When you do your keyword research, you will come across a lot of keywords that are in English in non-English-speaking countries. That's exactly why. It's not a bug. The system is not broken. That's just how it is.

If you look at the top apps, a lot of them are in English because they don't localize.

That's something you have to be mindful of and something Ariel has to tell almost everyone who does international ASO.

Question: Google Play Rankings Seem Stuck

Someone's saying:

"Have you noticed that Android Play Store rankings haven't fluctuated much since August 28th?"

Yeah.

There's something really strange about Google Play.

The rankings kind of got stuck for a few weeks a few weeks ago. There's a lot of weirdness in their reporting.

They had this weird thing where they added some numbers in the dashboard and we hounded them about it because it made everything confusing. They said, "No, no, no. This is fine. We did this on purpose." And then a few months later, they just decided to stop doing that and said nothing.

Something is definitely happening with Google Play. I don't exactly know what it is, but something is happening.

I don't think this is something that will ruin everything or change everything. I don't think the ranking algorithm is changing. If anything, it's some sort of architecture/infrastructure stuff happening under the hood.

We'll see what the data shows. We've only had a few days of this weirdness.

Question: How to Track CPP Activities with Polluted Data

Philip is asking:

"How to track CPP activities for specific path channels — search ads, web traffic now that the numbers are polluted with organic App Store search?"

Ariel doesn't have an answer for that yet, nor a way to do that in Appfigures. When Ariel will, Ariel will explain that in a video and also with a tutorial.

So keep an eye out for that.

Question: Non-ASO Factors That Affect Ranks

Aaron is asking:

"What non-ASO factors that are out of our control have an effect on ranks? For example, how frequently users use your app or delete it?"

That's a rich question.

On the App Store side of things, one thing that you don't exactly have the ability to control, but you do indirectly, is your conversion rate.

How many people see your App Store page and how many people actually download the app is something that Apple looks at. Sometimes it's a big factor, sometimes it isn't. It depends on a few other things. It's a part of the mix.

To Ariel's knowledge and in all of Ariel's testing, Apple does not really care what happens after you download the app. And that's for privacy reasons and other reasons they don't actually disclose.

So on the App Store side of things there aren't many things that you don't have control over, but there are some things you don't have direct control over, like that conversion rate.

You do have control over it indirectly because you can change and optimize your screenshots, your name, your icon. All those are things you can do to improve the conversion rate.

On Google Play, you do have a lot of things that you kind of have control over but not directly.

The uninstall rate is incredibly important. Ariel has seen this firsthand. It's ugly if you do it wrong.

The crash rate is also incredibly important.

If someone downloads your app and then immediately deletes it, you will get penalized by Google, and you'll get penalized harshly. If that happens at scale, your ranks are going to disappear, and clawing back out of that is going to be very unpleasant. So don't do that.

Same with crashes.

You have control over crashes because you're building the app. Test it before you push it out.

You're also optimizing. So if you optimize for the wrong keyword, or if you're driving traffic from a campaign that is loosely targeted, people will download it, be like, "That's not for me. That's not what I wanted. What is happening?" and delete it.

When that happens, you know you did something wrong. So don't do that either.

On Google, there's one more thing.

Google reads your reviews and extracts keywords from reviews.

The trouble is that competitors can pollute your keywords. Competitors can buy fake reviews that have bad keywords and those bad keywords can misalign you. Those bad keywords can influence your ranks and then lead to users getting your app for reasons that are not necessary. Then they download it and delete it, and everything hurts.

Ariel has seen that happen to one app at scale, and it was really, really bad.

Ariel tried to help them with all the knowledge Ariel has, and it's one of those things that you can't undo. You have to rebuild the foundation and build on top of it.

If that's happening to you, make sure that you flag those reviews. It's not the best way to do it, but it's a way to tell Google, "Hey, something is happening." If it's happening at scale, go and try to talk to Google.

It's not easy. It's not the kind of thing that fixes things immediately. But if you catch it as it's happening, that should give you a little bit more flexibility to fight it.

Question: Google Play Growth Tips (Metadata, Ads, Tags)

Leonardo is back and asking:

"How about some good Google Play growth tips today? Metadata, ads, tags, etc."

Let's talk about Google Play.

Here are three things Ariel recommends as beginning steps for Google Play:

1. Optimize Your Description (Google Actually Reads It)

Unlike Apple, Google Play cares about the description. Apple does not at all. They don't read it. They don't index it. But Google does.

Google allows for thousands of characters in the description. That means you have a lot of flexibility to add more color to your keywords, not just the 100 characters that Apple gives you.

They read it like a web page, not like metadata such as name and subtitle or short description.

That means:

• Repetition of keywords is actually healthy.
• Variations of keywords are actually healthy.
• Showing Google through text what the app is about is really important — more important than many others talk about.

We have a tool specifically for this that will show you how to do it and also help you get competitor information so you can extract learnings from them.

So one, look at the description and actually spend time on it.

It works with everything else, so just optimizing the description and not the name and not the short description is not going to be enough. But if you do all of them well, you're in good shape.

2. Use Inbound Links with Anchor Text (Advanced)

This is a little bit more advanced and something Ariel is working on for a guide.

Google cares about inbound links to Google Play that reference your Google Play Store page.

If you know how HTML works, there's a little label inside of the A tag. That label becomes a keyword.

If your app is, let's say, a kids story app and the link to it is labeled "kids stories" and you click it and get to Google Play, Google will eventually index that page. Google indexes the entire web.

They will find the link to Google Play, associate it with the label within the link, and assign it to your app.

From an SEO perspective, it's something you want to do.

You want to make sure that there are a lot of links pointing to your Google Play page (not just your own website) that have the right keywords.

In most cases, if someone links to you in a directory or in an article, they're not going to do that. They'll write "Click here to get this app" or something along those lines.

A tactic Ariel has seen work is:

• Look for all of the inbound links to your Google Play page.
• Ask whoever wrote them to change the label.

It doesn't work all the time, and it's a process to find the links. But if you do that and have that sort of exposure on the web, it will be really helpful.

Google wants more people to come into Google Play, just like Apple wants more people to come into the App Store, and that's what this does. They read it.

So do that.

3. Watch Your Reviews (Google Indexes Keywords There Too)

Watch your reviews because keywords are in reviews.

You want to ideally have keywords in your reviews. There's no easy way to do this and you have to speak suggestively when you ask someone to review your app.

When you respond to reviews, you can elicit some sort of specific response.

There are many tactics to do this. We can talk about this later. Email Ariel if you want thoughts on this because it's going to take way too long to explain here.

But focus on:

• Reading your reviews and making sure there's nothing bad.
• Understanding if there's anything good.
• Extracting some of these keywords and trying to optimize for them.

You're already getting them for free from your reviews, so that's going to be useful.

Focus on your description and really optimize that. It's not the kind of thing that you do once and forget about. If you do it enough times, you'll see what floats to the top.

And the last thing is: watch your inbound links. Your inbound links are such a rich source of keywords that not many people are talking about because it's kind of an advanced technique.

Question: Is App Store Launch Boost Really Dead?

Jordan is asking:

"Is App Store Launch Boost really dead?"

The answer is yes and no and maybe.

For background: Apple used to, up until a few months ago, give you a 7-day boost. Your app would show up in the autocomplete results for anything that is similar to your app. It would gain exposure.

Over the last few months, Ariel has seen a ton of apps saying this is no longer the case. Ariel watched the release of one app that ran into the same issue.

Realistically, there's just too much going on and Apple is trying to find other ways to add discovery.

Apple did something really big and started reading the screenshots of apps with AI to extract keywords from them. They do it in a slightly different way than what they do with the name and the subtitle and the keyword list.

Ariel has a whole guide on that in case you're curious and want to know how to take advantage of it.

Apple is shifting away because if you think about it, so many apps are launched every day. Thousands of apps are launched every week, which means that every minute there's probably an app coming out.

There's no real way to boost all of them.

The boost itself didn't work for multiple apps. It only worked for one app at a time. The targeting in the App Store is still not extremely precise or good.

Most people would see the same app. How can you give a seven-day boost to an app when thousands of apps are coming out? That's just impossible.

So we've reached the limit of what that boost can be. Either Apple deprecated it or really lowered what it could do and is trying to give more boost to more apps.

There is a little bit of a boost still happening. It's definitely happening, just not nearly as strong as it was before.

Honestly, Ariel thinks it's healthy. The boost, while nice, was just not something that can go on forever.

Live Technical Glitches

"Where am I?" Ariel did not lose the mouse this time, though. The mouse is still here.

For a while, Ariel couldn't bring things up on screen. The screen went missing. The mouse battery died. There was a lot of flipping between devices and trying to get the live tools to work while the noise outside came and went.

The noise eventually faded a bit, which was exciting.

Question: Reaction Time Keyword — Why Stuck at Rank 7–10?

Jan is asking:

"Can you take a look at 'reaction time' keyword in US? My app ranks seventh for 'reaction time training' and it seems impossible to rank higher. It fluctuates around 7 to 10."

Using Keyword Inspector in Appfigures, Ariel looks at "reaction time":

• 188 results
• Popularity: 32
• Competitiveness: 59 (lower than expected for a keyword with such popularity)
• Estimated 30,000 downloads on the top 10 apps and about a thousand dollars in revenue (rough due to small apps)

One of the most important things is keyword placement. Here, it's proper. You have "reaction time" in the name, upfront. No duplication, not too many keywords, a lot of focus on "reaction time".

But the problem is the number of ratings.

Nine ratings, while nice, is not enough. The top apps have more. When the numbers are that low (not hundreds or thousands), every rating counts.

The algorithm doesn't have a good way of knowing which app is more relevant. It will try to show relevancy by using the name and then the subtitle (where the keyword placement comes into play), but then it really looks at ratings as the way that it sorts the apps.

If you look at apps that have 31 vs 24 vs 20 ratings, you see you need a little bit more.

In the case of hundreds and thousands of ratings, you have to get close within 20–30%. But the smaller the total number, the smaller the gap needed.

If you can double your ratings even to 15–20, you'll be in a very good spot.

Ariel then tries to understand what's going on with some of the oddities in the rankings:

Some apps updated recently, are old, and have only three ratings, yet rank above. The average rating doesn't really matter there.

Ariel's immediate thought is that maybe those apps have almost no keywords in the keyword list, or only a very short set.

It's as if the developer of "Racer Reaction" was like, "I don't know what to do, let me just put 'time' and that's it." That can cause odd behavior.

Ariel suggests:

• Boost the number of ratings by optimizing your in-app rating prompts (the DPR — "downloads per rating" — of these is not ideal).
• Prune your keyword list. If it's messy or there's a lot going on, reduce it.

Jan can email Ariel with what's in the keyword list for more specific feedback.

Question: Non-English Prepositions in Keyword Lists

Leonardo is asking:

"Should I include non-English prepositions in my keyword list for these other languages? Are they ignored? Is Apple's algorithm smart enough?"

Yes, Ariel is pretty sure they're ignored. Apple has a stop word list in all the languages.

Appfigures even does that. So if Appfigures does it, Apple should definitely be doing that.

Question: Secondary Localizations and Long-Tail Keywords

Philip is asking (in multiple parts):

"Have you used US secondary localizations for two years? Iterated keywords, let them hold for periods but not seen benefits. Longtail keywords seem to hold little value.

Is there a better way to use secondary localizations or are the new CPP keyword lists a replacement?"

CPPs are not a replacement.

CPPs are actually kind of a competing optimization tactic with the localizations because Apple doesn't allow you to use the keywords from the localizations in them as easily, and we don't know what the impact is yet.

The core of the question is: you optimized for certain keywords and they didn't work.

Whether they're in a localization or not is secondary. Really, you're saying: "I tried these and nothing happened."

Go back to fundamentals and try to understand:

• What did you try?
• Was it relevant?
• Were you able to compete in these keywords?

It's not magic. If you put a massive keyword that you can't compete in into a localization, it's not magically going to work. It follows the same rules as everything else.

Make sure that you're optimizing for the right thing.

We have guides on:

• What is a good keyword?
• What is a keyword that I can compete in?

Ariel will link them later.

When people say "My ASO is not working" or "ASO is not working", usually the case is:

• You optimized for something that's too far out of reach.
• Maybe you need a hundred new ratings and you have two.
• Maybe you need a million new ratings and you have a thousand.

Also check:

• Are you optimizing properly?
• Are you focused on the right keyword?
• Is it relevant enough?
• Are you confusing the algorithm when you do that?

After you do all those things, something should work. If it doesn't, let Ariel know.

Philip is also saying:

"My last two apps got a bunch of ratings in the last 30 days. Doesn't seem to make changes in rankings. Is conversion rate more important for rankings?"

It really depends.

Again, if something is not working, there's probably a reason.

Ratings alone should give you a nice boost. But:

• If the ratings were concentrated in a single day out of 30, Apple ignores spikes. That won't be too helpful.
• If they were nice and steady or steady growth, that should give you a boost, especially if you're optimizing properly.

So again:

• Do you have any keyword duplication?
• Are you defocusing the algorithm?
• Is the placement of your keywords correct?
• Do you have the right keywords in your name?
• Are you aiming for keywords that are beyond what you got in the last 30 days?

A bunch of ratings could be 100, and if your competitors are at 1,000, that's still a problem. If they're at 10,000 and you're at 1,000, that's still a problem.

Make sure everything else is correct. If it is, the ratings will help.

Conversion rate also helps. If your page's conversion is very low, you have to optimize that. But that's unrelated to what ratings can impact when it comes to ranks.

Question: Apple Search Ads Brand Keywords Stopped Getting Impressions

Andy is saying:

"My brand keyword suddenly stopped burning (bidding?) and not showing enough impressions as well. Previously TTR and CR were good. I tried several things like increasing max CPT bid and increasing budget."

This is a question about Apple Search Ads, not organic ASO.

Usually what that means is that a competitor came in and really bought the keyword and is really spending money on it.

Appfigures has a tool that will show you who's advertising on the keyword.

In Keyword Inspector, you can see all the apps that are advertising using Apple ads for a given keyword and their share over time.

It's possible that before no one really cared about this keyword and you were just owning it all, and you had the highest share. Over time, that changed.

Maybe a competitor came in and thought this is a great way to grow the user base. You'll see this by looking at their share and changing the number of days to look back. Comparing 180 days vs 14 days should give you something to understand.

Some keywords are seasonal. For example, "reaction time" might be related to summer or back to school. Ariel doesn't know this keyword very well, but seasonality can be a reason.

Question: Can I Use a Company Name as a Keyword?

Jay is asking:

"Can I use a keyword that happens to be a company name, but the company has nothing to do with the content of my app? The company is an insurance company, but my app is about photo."

Yes, you absolutely can.

The question is: is anyone going to search for it? If someone's going to search for it then yes, you can try.

One thing is that the company might have searches on the App Store using a tool like Explore that will tell them anytime someone uses their word. If they're using that word as a trademark or copyright, they will go to Apple and say, "Nope, take it away." And Apple will come to you and say you can't use it, usually in a polite way.

It depends. Ariel doesn't know what the word is, so it's hard to say more. If you email Ariel, Ariel can look it up and see what else is happening.

Ariel is not a legal adviser.

Question: How Many Downloads Does a 39-Popularity Keyword Bring?

Apprentice Kid is saying:

"I'm working on getting top three for a keyword with 39 popularity in the US. How many downloads would you say such a keyword can bring?"

There's not enough information to actually answer that.

Popularity does not correlate to downloads 1:1. The way that trend is calculated is complicated.

Realistically, you should look in Keyword Inspector and see what other apps are getting and what other keywords they have. If you can build the same set of keywords, you will see what kind of downloads and revenue they're generating in the country.

There's no direct correlation. If anyone tells you they can give you downloads based only on popularity, they're probably wrong.

The way it's calculated changes all the time.

Question: Duplicating Keywords and Screenshots

A question from the chat:

"Recommendations about duplicating keywords. Title, subtitle should have different words than a keyword list. What about the screenshot? Should I use ones in the list or others?"

The name, subtitle, and keyword list should all have different keywords. Yes, this competes with what Apple's doing now with CPPs.

When it comes to screenshots, you do want to duplicate keywords. Not only between the name and the screenshots, or the subtitle or the keyword list, but also between the keywords themselves.

Ariel found that repeating keywords within the first three screenshots actually gives more weight to the keyword.

This is all in the guide Ariel wrote about Apple reading screenshots.

So:

• You do want to duplicate.
• You do want to reuse keywords from the name, subtitle, and keyword list in your screenshots.

Ariel has been calling duplication the cardinal sin of ASO for years. But when it comes to screenshots, you do want to repeat.

Question: Does Changing Screenshots Periodically Help Downloads?

Kresler is asking:

"Does changing app screenshots periodically help downloads or make them worse?"

It doesn't do either, by itself.

The mere act of changing the screenshots has no implication on your downloads. If you do better screenshots, you will get more downloads. If you do worse screenshots, you will get fewer.

So optimizing your screenshots is always a benefit. You don't take any hits from changing them again and again because this goes directly to users. Conversion from impressions to downloads is about users seeing those screenshots and wanting or not wanting to download.

It's not something Apple or Google choose.

The one challenge is that now Apple is reading your screenshots.

In addition to screenshots being good for conversion, they're also good for discovery. That means you should optimize them as often as you can.

Just like anything else with keywords, give it a little time. Don't change them too often. Apple's AI and indexing don't give instant feedback.

Ariel would not change screenshots more than twice a month. Twice is pretty aggressive. If you need to, because you want to try different things, you can, but it's not recommended because you won't get enough feedback.

Question: Pre-Orders and Discovery

Philip is asking something that has nothing to do with ASO directly:

"Please discuss App Store pre-orders and effective strategies."

Pre-orders are like a magical tool to help with discovery.

Pre-orders allow you to put your app up for "sale" so people can pre-download it and get it when it becomes available.

What that does, if you can drive enough traffic to it, is aggregate all the downloads you would get over, say, the first seven days of your app going live into a single day.

Instead of 5, 10, or 100 new downloads a day for seven days, the algorithm sees 700 downloads on day one.

700 downloads have the chance to generate way more ratings in a single shot than any other day. That should cascade over time because not everyone is going to use it immediately.

What you're doing is front-loading all of your downloads and performance, and the algorithm sees it.

A bunch of big apps have used this. A bunch of apps from all over. Ariel wrote about it in the newsletter multiple times.

That's a great tactic to get visibility. A bunch of apps just shot to the top of the App Store because of it, mostly because they aggregated all those downloads into a single day. That gives you category ranks and a boost.

If you do any sort of advertising outside of the App Store — newsletter, social media, anything — you should do that and do pre-orders.

Apple and Google both support those.

It's such a great strategy. It doesn't really cost anything. It's like luck favors the prepared.

Yes, do that.

Question: Google Play Ranks Being Stuck

GM is saying:

"There is no information on the web about Google ranks being stuck. Even asking ChatGPT deep research."

No one writes about these things. Appfigures writes about them sometimes, but it's fleeting. They come and go. It's hard to detect.

Realistically, just let it happen and in a few days it will probably go away.

Not the most amazing answer coming from a data guy, but knowing Google Play, that's fine.

Question: Analyzing a New App (Hair Hero) and Overstuffed Titles

Someone says:

"Brand new app, Hair Hero. Learning ASO for the first time. Could you help analyzing it? I'm changing title to 'AI hair scanner — Hair hero'. Subtitle, 'Hair snap, loss, health and type'."

Ariel can't analyze this one app in depth right now, but there are a few important things here that are worth pointing out for everyone.

There is an inclination for every developer optimizing for the first time to push as many new things into the name. We see that here.

We see:

• Hair
• Scanner
• Loss
• Health
• Type
• Hero
• Snap
• AI

That's a lot of stuff. Way too much stuff.

All of these things could potentially be useful for the app, but the algorithm sees this and it's like, "What is happening? What are you trying to tell me?"

Thing number one: do less.

Always, always, always do less.

What is Hair Hero? What does it do? Does it scan your hair for something? Whatever it does, that's the one thing you need to focus on.

Five or six years ago, you might have wanted to introduce as many keywords as possible. Over the last few years, you want to reduce the number of keywords.

Ariel has been talking about focus for a good four or five years at this point. This is exactly what that means. There's too much going on here.

Instead, focus.

Thing number two: what does "AI" have to do with hair?

If it is part of the app, then OK, keep it. If you're just shoving "AI" into it because you want to ride the wave — everyone is trying to ride the wave right now — there's so much competition on every AI keyword possible that if you just put this in to try and get visibility, you're going to get the exact opposite.

It's going to take up space for something that could work.

Ariel doesn't know if anyone is looking for "AI hair scanner". A lot of people are now looking for "AI" only in the context of chat or chatbot.

If it's "AI" and "hair scanner", the popularity is probably not going to be high.

So a lesson to everyone: don't inject "AI" into your keyword list just because. It's going to have the exact opposite effect from what you're thinking.

So:

1. Focus on the most important thing.
2. Don't bring "AI" into it unless you absolutely have to and know that it works.

Question: Does Apple Favor Apps Using Accessibility or New iOS Features?

Jennifer is asking:

"Does Apple's ranking algorithm favor apps that implement app accessibility features? How about iOS 26-only features?"

Apple favors anything that uses its own tools. Apple also boosts things that use some of its newest tools.

Ariel doesn't know specifically about iOS 26 features yet. We'll have to see as this rolls out and we have more data.

But when in-app events came out, an app with an in-app event would fly to the top.

When featured in-app purchases came out, apps that used featured IAPs would fly to the top.

So yes, if you can, you should use those. And it's not weird to say "let's use a feature specifically for marketing or discovery". Discovery is a part of building apps.

Question: What's More Important — Ratings or Retention?

Abdullah is asking:

"What has more weight in the algorithm: high number of ratings or better retention rate?"

On the Apple side of things, higher number of ratings. Retention does not play into it.

On Google's side, retention has some impact, but it's mostly about immediate deletion and crashes.

Number of ratings is a constant. Everything else depends.

Question: Where to Learn ASO

Po is asking:

"Can you please guide from where to learn ASO?"

Appfigures has a ton of resources.

Ariel has done live streams, standalone videos, and is about to release a video on keyword research.

There are also a few guides that you'll love. Ariel will link to the entire ASO resources section, where you can go through and look at them. There's a bunch of good stuff in there.

Question: Changing App Category from Education to Games

Jimmy is asking:

"I have an app that is listed under Apps > Education. I'm planning on switching category to Games > Roleplay. What are your thoughts on this?"

That's a big switch.

Ariel doesn't know what the app is.

If it's a kids game, an educational app that is also a roleplay game, maybe. But then:

• Is that for kids or adults?
• Why are you switching categories?

If it's for discovery purposes, are you going to get better discovery in Games > Roleplay than under Apps > Education? Ariel doubts it.

Apps (and especially Games) are considerably more competitive.

If it's for some other purpose that you have to do, then you have to do it.

If you send Ariel an email with why you're thinking about this change, Ariel can help you ask the right questions and point you at where to get the right data to see if it's a good choice.

Question: iOS Games App

Leonardo is asking:

"Any thoughts about iOS upcoming games app?"

Ariel looked at the games app and it's cool. If you've used Arcade at all, it kind of feels familiar.

Ariel doesn't know what's going to happen with it.

When Apple came out with the games app, Ariel thought they were going to take games out of the App Store and only put them in the games app. That would have been horrible for discovery.

Now, it seems like it's just going to be a thing.

Apple's lack of focus on games, which you can see through Arcade and how Arcade never really took off, suggests not a lot of people care.

Arcade is so small, tightly controlled, with zero visibility into it, that no one cares. Ariel has been waiting for Arcade to take off for however long it's been around, but it just hasn't.

Ariel thinks in the next six months, no one's going to care about the games app either, beyond hardcore gamers.

Ariel doesn't think a lot of people come to the iPhone as a discovery mechanism for games. Most people play games and they have an iPhone; they don't come to the iPhone because of games.

That's why top grossing games are mostly there because they do a ton of ads, not because of Store discovery.

We'll see in a few months, especially around Christmas.

Question: App Name vs Keyword in the Name

Philip is asking:

"Should I just use the main keyword as my app name or app name plus main keyword?"

Always start with a keyword that is not your app name.

The algorithm in left-to-right languages reads from left to right, and in right-to-left languages from right to left, and assigns value accordingly.

You want to make sure that you are putting the keywords that are most important for discovery first.

So: keyword and then app name.

That's how Ariel would go about it because you always want to build a brand. Keyword alone you'll probably not be able to get unless your keyword is something no one is searching for.

Otherwise, someone has probably taken it or squatted on it over the last however many years the App Store has been open.

Question: Where to Get Ideas for a New App

Faisal is asking:

"Hi, I'm a mobile developer, want to launch my app. Can you tell me how I can do research to get ideas for app?"

Appfigures has a tool called Explore.

Explore is a search engine for apps with a ton of additional filters, so you can see what's working and what's not working.

You can see:

• How much money apps are making
• How that changed over time

There are also reports built on top of Explore.

In the Market Report section in the left-hand side menu on the site, you can find reports that tell you:

• What's trending right now
• What's dropping
• What's growing fast
• What's losing momentum

There are a lot of ways to see this using Explore and those additional reports.

If you're not sure where to begin, send Ariel an email and Ariel will point you in the right direction.

Question: Do Keywords in Apple Search Ads That Match Metadata Reduce CPT?

Leonardo is asking:

"Does using keywords in Apple Search Ads that are also in the metadata reduce your cost per tap?"

No, not directly. There's no direct correlation between what you do for paid and what you do for organic.

But what you do in your paid keywords gains relevance from what you have in your metadata.

If you don't have a keyword in your metadata and just throw it into Apple ads, you may not see any impressions or taps at all, mostly because Apple will deem it as irrelevant.

That doesn't really increase your price by itself, but it will increase it effectively because now you're fighting with apps that are relevant.

So in a sense, yes, it could reduce your cost per tap, but it's not direct. It's not because it's there; it's because of the relationship and the relevance.

Questions About Appfigures Plans and Accuracy

Jana is asking:

"Would you consider adding a plan only for indies with a max annual income with all features for like 50 bucks?"

We thought about this.

Just like you're an indie, we're also technically indie. We have not taken investment. We're not planning on it. Everything we do comes from our revenue.

If we add a plan that gives away too much, and intelligence unfortunately is the kind of thing that costs a lot to get — all the work we do to understand how things work and put that out there — that is incredibly expensive.

If we do that, we're going to be a wreck.

We have to balance giving you the best plan we can and keeping the lights on without taking investment, which would lead us in directions that in the past have ruined our competitors.

If we can, we will in the future. We don't have a plan to do that right now.

We do have plans to make our plans as easy to consume as possible.

We don't require annual commitment. We just released Boost, which is an amazing plan that has all of the discovery tools you need (minus app intelligence) but with competitor information for 250 bucks.

We don't require any talk to sales or anything like that. Buy it once, use it, abuse it for a month. We don't have many limits on what you're allowed to do — how many keyword lookups and all that stuff.

Use it, use it, use it, and then downgrade after a month. We're fully OK with that.

That's how we see our plans.

Another viewer says they compared Appfigures versus AppRadar and all of the keyword popularity was the same. That's because it's coming from Apple.

But they found that AppRadar was mainly underestimating and Appfigures was near. Now they're on an Appfigures plan.

Appfigures does a lot of work to make sure the numbers make sense.

Our bar is: does it make sense or not, and is it useful? If it's not useful, we're not going to put it out there.

In some cases, we have not put out data because there's no good way to calculate it. For example, the number of downloads per keyword. People email Ariel all the time asking for that. There's just no good way to do that.

We won't put out a bad number.

Accuracy is incredibly important for us.

Closing the Stream

By this point, Ariel is technically over time but sticks around for another few minutes.

Ariel thanks everyone for sticking around through all the technical difficulties: the noise, the missing mouse, the screen issues. Ariel usually is very prepared, but the construction noise took too much time to deal with.

Clearly, taking questions is the way to go.

In a few weeks, Ariel will do another live stream. Ariel is going to be at a conference, giving the keynote presentation in New York City. It will be amazing.

We'll see if that stream is live or recorded. Ariel will be back in about a month with a guest.

Hopefully, no noise and no technical difficulties. We'll see how that goes.

Ariel is going to go back to answering all the remaining questions in the comments.

If you have any other questions, find Ariel on X or on LinkedIn or send an email. Ariel is always around to help, even if it takes a little bit.

That's all for today. See you in a few weeks.

✨ This transcript was generated and enhanced by AI and may differ from the original video.