Stop Guessing Why Some Apps Blow Up: Competitor Intelligence Q&A

Why Competitor Intelligence Matters Right Now

Ariel opened by explaining that app and game development are at a very interesting moment. Building is becoming much simpler, and if you have looked at any of the data Appfigures has been putting out over the last few months, the App Store and Google Play are being flooded with apps and games because everyone and their grandmothers are vibe coding right now.

That is a whole other topic, but it means you cannot just go it alone. If you are trying to fight the good fight, meaning you are trying to compete with all these other apps without using any intelligence, you are going to stay behind. That happens to every industry as it matures, and that is why competitive intelligence is so important.

It also saves you so much time.

Ariel said he gets questions all the time about what to do with keywords, how to copy Apple Ads campaigns, what to do with TikTok, and more. Instead of answering a bunch of emails and DMs that no one else will see, Ariel wanted to answer those questions live.

The First Thing Ariel Looks At: Targeting Through Custom Product Pages

Ariel said something he has been interested in a lot lately is targeting using custom product pages.

If you have been following Ariel on social media, LinkedIn or X, you probably know exactly where he is going with this because he has been doing this for a few weeks: taking an app and looking at its custom product pages to see how it positions itself.

You will find the weirdest things, and weird in a good way.

Example: ScanHero, a PDF Scanner

Ariel looked at an app called ScanHero, a PDF scanner.

If you know anything about scanners, you know that they are actually built into most phones at this point. It is built into Apple. It is built into Google. If you go into the Notes app on the Apple side and take a picture, you can use it as a scanner. The Notes app actually does so much that no one knows about.

But it is not convenient, and it does not brand itself as a scanner in any way, shape, or form. So if you need to scan a document and you need it to look like a document, not like a photo on your table, then you are going to go into the App Store and look for a scanner of some sort, especially if you want to make it into a PDF.

In the last 30 days, ScanHero got about 20,000 downloads and generated about half a million dollars after fees. Appfigures also includes iPad revenue now, so this is a pretty comprehensive look.

Ariel emphasized that this app is making money, but it is also using a lot of advertising and making sure it gets to all the right places. This is not just happening. It is a lot of effort.

The Interesting Part: 35 Custom Product Pages

The key is what competitive intelligence reveals.

When Ariel looked at ScanHero’s product pages, it had 35. Thirty-five was the max until not very long ago. When you see the max from any single app, that means someone is really trying.

Every custom product page is just a little bit different by use case. That is how you take an app that is so generic, basically a camera, and advertise it: by use case.

What can you do with a document scanner?

• Scan text documents.
• Convert photos to PDFs.
• Scan your license.
• Scan tax documents.
• Use the same idea in different languages.

Ariel said you might think, “I can think about this myself. I know that if I have a document scanner, I can turn a document into a PDF.” But that is not how this works.

This is ScanHero automatically making sure it gets to all the "right" users. Ariel put right in quotes because there are so many different groups, and that is where it becomes interesting.

There is so much to learn from this because you can see exactly what they are going after. If you go after dating apps, you will see exactly how they are targeting different groups. If you go after almost any app in any niche, you will be able to see how competitors are thinking about their users.

That is an amazing way to look at the competition.

Why One Generic Product Page Is Usually a Bad Idea

Ariel said if you are not doing this, you are using one generic product page to address all of your users. That is always a bad idea.

It is a bad idea because users are not thinking, “Let me do all the work and think about what this app can do for me.” Not at all. They are looking for one very specific thing, and that is pretty much it.

If that thing is not extremely obvious, they are going to move on to the next competitor.

At this point, there are so many apps in categories like tax documents or PDFs. Ariel searched Appfigures Explorer for PDF scanner to see how many there were.

Explorer is Appfigures’ search engine for apps. You can search by pretty much anything from name to revenue, release date, and many other filters. There are more than 70 filters. Ariel said he may do a whole video one day about how he uses Explorer to identify trends.

To give context, Ariel said releases on the App Store specifically went up by 118% in March of 2026 versus March of 2025. That is more than double, and the numbers were already high.

For PDF scanner by name, there were about a thousand apps. There could be other scanners that do not go by PDF scanner and instead use image scanner or something else. Ariel was not even looking at those explicitly.

The competition is steep: about half and half between Apple and Google, which makes sense. Some are not even cross-platform, so you may have two completely different apps across stores.

ScanHero is competing with a thousand other apps doing exactly the same thing. The only way it can get to that level of revenue is by targeting very specifically.

If you are trying to make a document scanner or PDF scanner, you cannot just make it generic. You need it to address at least the use cases your competitors are addressing, and you need to put that up front so everyone knows the app does those things.

Ariel said many scanning apps probably do not do any of this targeting, and they are not sure why they are not making money, why they are not getting visibility, and why their ads are not converting as much.

They have the same app. Ultimately, it is a camera and an algorithm to crop the edges. Ariel was not trying to put down the apps; he said he is sure there is more cool stuff in them. But the idea is that you can easily build more of these apps, while getting them to users is much harder.

Just because you can build it does not mean it is going to earn just as much money.

Revenue Distribution in a Competitive Category

Ariel sorted PDF scanner apps by monthly revenue in Explorer.

CamScanner was making about $7 million in the last 30 days. Ariel joked that if he had a poof animation, he would use it.

ScanHero is not even the top dog in the niche. Yet look at everyone else. There were dozens of pages of apps that are not making nearly as much money. Some apps were making around $5,000, which is still a decent amount of money, especially for an indie and especially for an app that does not require a backend.

Ariel said he would take that.

But after that, there were many pages of apps making little or no money. The long tail dipped into hundreds of dollars and then apps not making any money.

A developer might say, “But I’m doing the exact same thing.” Ariel’s answer: you are not.

If you have not done this analysis, it is the first thing Ariel would do when looking at competitors. Go into the competitive niche and do this.

Ariel also mentioned that Appfigures is working on making this easier so users do not have to look at it with their eyes. There will be a beta. Appfigures also has more betas coming up around AI, more intelligence data sets, and new dashboards.

Q&A: Should You Be Worried About Vibe-Coded Apps?

A question came in: when competition is too high and there are too many vibe-coded apps, should developers be worried? People are spending a couple of days to build, while others spend months creating a real polished experience for ads too.

Ariel answered: yes and no and maybe.

He qualified that because he has seen the yes, the no, and the maybe.

Should you be worried that someone building an app in a very short amount of time is going to come into your field and compete with your app that you spent a lot of time polishing and making amazing? Yes, you should absolutely be worried, because that is exactly what is happening right now.

Ariel sees this across the board, especially around AI. Every app is wrapping AI in some weird novel way and trying to make money with it.

The real challenge is not exactly whether you should be worried. Competition is always going to be a thing, whether it is vibe-coded apps making it easier, some other technology, or simply more people interested because money on the App Store and Google Play continues to rise in a way we have never seen before.

There is so much opportunity right now in mobile apps and games. Ariel has been putting out data showing that very simple apps, from a mechanic and feature standpoint, can make hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, which is many millions every year.

So yes, you should be worried about competition. But the amount of time it takes to build an app is becoming irrelevant. Ariel said it has always been irrelevant.

It is really about:

• What kind of value you are delivering to the user.
• Whether you know the user.
• Whether the app does what that user wants it to do.

If there is a niche where the user needs a very specific set or a very small number of features and you can build those in a weekend, Ariel thinks that is what you should do. You should always start with a V1.

Starting with a very polished product is nice, and maybe in 2010 it was a requirement, but it has not been a requirement for a long time. People are now looking for things that let them get stuff done.

Ariel said this is not true for games. Games are sufficiently different and require a different conversation. But for apps, it is all about whether the app can do what the user wants it to do.

It is less about the app having every feature, and more about whether it answers all the questions, some of the questions, or the most important questions for a particular user, ideally the largest type of user who would pay you money.

That is why you have to understand the competitive landscape. You have to understand why users are using either your competitors or you.

There could be a case where an app takes a week to build and competes with you.

Distribution and Marketing Matter More Than Build Time

The second point Ariel made is that you cannot do any of this without thinking about distribution, marketing, and how you will get to users.

It does not matter whether your app is super polished and took six years to build, or whether you spent a weekend building it. If the weekend app gets enough of what is necessary to reach its users, it will outdo any app that took years to build if that app does not.

Ariel has seen many developers fall into the pit of thinking:

• The app is so good, it should sell itself.
• I spent so much time on it.
• Maybe I do not want to work on it anymore because I spent so much time on it.
• Maybe I just do not know how to do marketing.
• Apple should just promote it for me.

None of that happens.

Some of the apps that are winning today may not have taken the same approach to design, but they have taken the right approach to finding the market. That might mean TikTok, influencers, great app store optimization, or Apple Ads.

Those things are more important overall, and that is what developers should think about.

More competition should not mean, “Should I not spend more time on my apps?” It should mean, “Should I spend more time on my marketing?” The answer is yes.

You can reinvent the wheel, or you can learn from the competition:

• How they are doing Apple Ads.
• How they are doing app store optimization.
• How they are doing custom product pages.

That will get you ahead faster. That is where you should spend effort.

As more vibe-coded apps and AI-assisted development happens, Ariel foresees the numbers growing and growing. Apple and Google are not going to be able to stop them.

For end users, that is good. It means more features and more opportunities. For developers and app businesses, it means spending more time identifying who your users are and catering to that specific user.

Q&A: How Does Apple Choose Which Custom Product Page to Show?

A question came in: how does Apple choose which product page to show for the user, and do you add keywords for each product page?

Up until around last summer, you could only use custom product pages with Apple Ads campaigns. You would create a campaign and attach a custom product page to it.

Then you would segment your campaigns based on keyword type or intent. In the case of tax documents, everything related to taxes would go into a single campaign or a single keyword group, which Apple calls an ad group.

Then you would add the custom product page to it. Anyone coming in from those keywords would land on that product page. Ideally, that would convert better, and everything Ariel has seen suggests that it did convert better, saved money, and got more downloads for Apple Ads.

Apple got excited and enabled this for everyone.

Now in App Store Connect, you can go in and attach a keyword from your keyword list to a custom product page. It is not convenient, but it works. When someone searches for that keyword, they are shown that custom product page.

Ariel said this is something everyone should do.

If you do not know how to leverage this, Ariel has a whole video on setting them up, assigning them, and dealing with the problem that it only works from your keyword list. If you optimize your keyword list properly, it does not exactly work the way Apple would like it to work, so there is a dilemma. Ariel said he answered that in the video and would link it later.

Q&A: Are We Overselling How Quickly Valuable Apps Can Be Vibe-Coded?

A comment said people may oversell how quickly valuable apps can be vibe-coded.

Ariel said that is both true and false.

At the beginning, Ariel was bullish on the idea that you have to build your own app, know exactly what it is doing, and understand the code. But the more he worked with AI himself, running agents, coding agents, and building things, the more he realized that you really have to know what you want.

AI can do an amazing job building things, whether designing with Claude design, building apps, building websites, or building internal tooling. It can do an amazing job, but only if you know what you want.

If you really know what you want, can direct the AI, and are willing to work with it, you can make useful apps. Ariel has seen useful apps and games vibe-coded almost instantly, as long as the operator has a vision and knows exactly what needs to happen.

But if you ask the AI to think for you, you are not going to get something good.

Ariel thinks that is what many people are doing now, especially people who do not have a background in development or engineering. He does not think AI can do an amazing job with someone who just says, “Make me a notebook app,” even though that is what Google and many vibe-coding apps are selling.

Realistically, when you know exactly what you want, have the background, and could build it yourself but are using AI as a shortcut, it can get stuff done.

Ariel has seen apps built in a week that rival apps built in months. Whether that is the best way to do it, whether it is manageable, and whether it will last for a long time, he does not know. We are in it now, so it is a good starting point.

As long as the person running the AI knows exactly what to do and can build it themselves, the app can come out good and be useful, not total garbage.

Q&A: How Can a New Home Workout App Rank High With One Rating?

A question came in about a home workout app released just over a month ago that ranks very high for many workout-related keywords with just one rating. How is that possible, and how can it be recreated?

At first glance, nothing looked very exciting. The app was not ranking really high in Health and Fitness and had only a handful of downloads. Ariel said Appfigures may not even see downloads from the US, so it is probably a little higher, because the US usually has a higher share. But the bar for estimating the US keeps going up because there are so many more downloads.

The app was getting some downloads, but not a ton.

Ariel went to Keyword Inspector and looked at keyword ranks. The app ranked number seven for home workout and had a bunch of popularity scores around five, sorted by popularity.

It was ranking for something, but the keywords were very low popularity. Ariel thought that may be what was happening.

For keywords with popularity around five, it is kind of a challenge to get ranked, which sounds weird. Realistically, the algorithm does not get enough traffic, so it does not have much to learn from. It tries what it tries.

Ariel has a sneaking suspicion that Apple uses low-popularity keywords to learn about conversion rates for apps, then uses that information on higher-popularity keywords. If Apple gets a lot of traffic for one keyword, it wants results to be as good as possible. But if the keyword gets only a handful of requests, no one really cares.

Apple always optimizes for serving the end user best: when an iPhone or iPad user comes into the App Store and searches for something, Apple wants that user to download and pay for something, because ultimately it is a business.

Ariel suspected the ranking had something to do with keywords. If you analyze the keywords, the app is probably using them a little better than some competitors. For popularity four or five, you generally do not need much in terms of ratings.

Ariel then looked at the home workout keyword. He has been looking at home workout for a long time, even before COVID made the category really big. There is a lot of weirdness in that category, not weirdness with the algorithm, but apps doing shady things that Apple has not caught six years later, which Ariel called insane.

The app was number seven for home workout. Many apps were repeating keywords. The top result did not repeat, but many others did. Some competitors had many more ratings. Some apps had the keyword only in the subtitle and still had a lot of ratings.

Ariel said if they looked at history, they would probably see more ratings in the past, and maybe that is a lasting effect the algorithm has. Eventually, the ranking will likely go down as other apps attempt to do more.

So it was not crazy. What is crazy is that some apps have been there so long and do a really good job getting conversion, getting distribution, and playing the game really well.

Q&A: No-Code, Low-Code, and Why Development Is No Longer the Bottleneck

A follow-up comment said no-code and low-code were always there for product people who wanted to build apps.

Ariel agreed, but said the results of those tools were always very poor. On a one-to-ten scale, he would not put them beyond a two. He has tried most of them at some point.

Some ran within their own little runner apps, which Ariel said is horrible. They never competed in any way, in his opinion, maybe for internal tools, but not for anything serious or worthy of distribution.

That is the shift now. Development is becoming easier.

But the other side of development becoming easier is the question: what do you develop?

You can make any app you want and any feature you want, but:

• Which segments have the fewest competitors?
• Which segments are going to be the hottest?
• Where should you go?

As development gets easier, everything becomes about marketing, distribution, and decision-making.

Ariel said this is an amazing time to be a data company like Appfigures because it has so much knowledge, and users who use Appfigures see more success because they make better decisions.

For a developer thinking, “I don’t know how to do marketing, I don’t know how to do distribution, I don’t want to think about these things because marketing is a dirty word,” Ariel said those notions should be left in the past.

Instead, developers should think:

• How do I harness TikTok?
• How do I harness Reddit?
• How do I understand Apple Ads?
• How do I leverage app store optimization?

Once you make the app, and ideally you started with research, the app should have everything your user wants because you know your user extremely well. Then you set yourself up for success, and all you have to do is iterate over Meta Ads, TikTok, Apple Ads, and other distribution channels.

Apple Ads has become huge for apps. Most apps Ariel knows use Apple Ads to some extent, whether $100 a month or $100,000 a month. You get equivalent results based on what you spend or what you put in, but the apps learning how to leverage those channels well are the apps that will win, regardless of whether they were vibe-coded or had a team of 100 people working on them.

That is no longer the determinant of success.

Q&A: Upcoming Appfigures Features

A question came in asking whether new features are coming to Appfigures.

Ariel said yes, many.

Appfigures has new data sets coming, new dashboards coming, and new AI tools coming. Across the board, the team spent the beginning of Q1 and beyond working on something new for advertising, specifically Apple Ads, because they have ideas no one else is implementing and someone has to do them.

Ariel invited anyone who wants to be in betas for new dashboards, new advertiser tools, new AI, or anything else to email him.

Q&A: What Does It Take to Vibe Code Correctly?

A follow-up comment said you need to know how to make product decisions, not code, but UX, features, and so on.

Ariel said that summarizes how to vibe code correctly.

Let the AI worry about the code. It is not going to be amazing or perfect in any way, shape, or form. If you like that sort of perfection, you have to build the code yourself.

The AI has a way of doing things, and it is not what most developers would want, including Ariel. But at the same time, AI knows how to manage its own code.

If you give in to the process and worry about the end result, Ariel thinks you will end up with a working product that could be as good as a product coded without AI assistance.

The AI becomes a very good autocomplete to an extent. But the vision, direction, UX, interactions, and everything else have to come from you. You need the right eye for things.

If you do, great. It does not matter who is building it. If you do not, that is a different problem.

Q&A: Opportunities in Keyword Translation and Localization

A question was asked about opportunities in keyword translation and localizing to markets outside English-speaking countries.

Ariel brought it back to competitor intelligence. One thing he would do is understand whether competitors are localizing. If they are, that is one thing. If they are not, that is another.

When thinking about expansion beyond the US market, look at competitors and see where their revenue or downloads are coming from.

Most apps are US-heavy to some extent because the US is a very large market. A similar thing happens with China, but that is more isolated. You are not going to see China and Europe in the same way; you will mostly see the US and Europe or the US and other countries.

First, look at that. If a competitor is doing well in other countries, go look at their keyword strategy.

Depending on the country, more people may search for apps in English, especially in your niche. The reason is that most apps are not localized, Apple and Google do not really do automatic localizations. Google gives you the ability to do it, but Apple does not at all.

If you do not localize, users in that country end up with a bunch of apps in English. Many countries speak English to some extent, and some countries do not mind searching in English for things they know they will find because they will get more results.

So in some countries, you do not necessarily have to localize. You can, and it will probably help, depending on the competition.

The thing about localization is that if you localize, you really have to localize. It is not just your keywords.

If someone finds your keywords in German, downloads the app, and the app is completely in English, they are going to feel misled. If they go to the App Store page and all the screenshots are in English, or the screenshots do not show things relevant for Germany, that is going to be a problem.

Ariel gave an example from a livestream with someone who did A/B testing for screenshots for Google Maps. Google Maps tested whether, in the UK, they could show American buses and get the same conversion rate as UK buses, which are visually different.

The answer was no.

Even Google Maps, an app everyone has and everyone knows, got fewer downloads when the visuals were not localized. That was English to English, not even a language issue. It was just visual.

So if you are localizing, go all the way and localize all the way.

Whether you need to localize is a decision Ariel would answer by looking at the competition. That is where you will see opportunities.

If you have one, two, or three competitors that are not big in a specific country, go to that country, localize really well, and you can take over. Even if they are bigger than you in the US, they do not have to be bigger than you in other countries.

If competitors are not doing enough, go do it and do it well. If they are doing it, you also have to do it, because otherwise you have no chance.

You can also see how competitors present themselves, what keywords they use in other countries, and use that to make the decision.

From Ariel’s experience, some countries are very open to searching in English. Some countries are much less open. It is probably a combination of culture, the number of apps available in the country, and the development rate within the country.

You cannot just say localize or do not localize. It depends on the country and where you are trying to go.

Look at the competition and learn from them. They wasted their time inventing and reinventing the wheel enough times that you do not have to.

You can see distribution from an app profile on Appfigures, even for free, just to get an idea. Then you can dig into keywords if you want.

Q&A: Tools for Creating App Screenshots

A question asked whether Ariel could recommend tools for creating app screenshots.

Ariel answered: not really.

There are visual tools to put text and images on the screen. There is a garden variety of them: Sketch, Figma, Photoshop, Canva, and many others.

But Ariel’s recommendation is different. You have to do user research to know exactly what users want to see.

It is less about how you are putting visuals on the screen, whether it is a title and subtitle and screenshot, a screenshot and subtitle, or a small caption. That is secondary.

The visual is a conversion mechanism. What you really have to think about is: what do I need to show?

In previous livestreams where Ariel did screenshot teardowns, most screenshots were not doing a good job, especially in the last one, because they were not thinking about the user. They were thinking about what the developer wanted to show.

What the developer wants to show is irrelevant in the grand scheme, especially if you want to make money. When you want someone else’s money, you have to think about that someone else at every little point along the way.

Think about your user:

• What is the first big problem they have that you can solve?
• Is that problem something a feature can solve?
• Or is the problem that they do not believe you can do what you say you will do?

If it is a belief problem, you may need to show social proof.

The easiest way to understand users, in Ariel’s opinion, is to read your reviews and your competitors’ reviews. They will tell you everything.

Ariel often logs into the reviews page on an app profile and reads reviews. He usually starts with negative reviews, one or two stars. Two or three stars can also work, because one-star reviews may be too extreme.

Once you understand what people do not like, you can tell what they do like. Then you know exactly what you should put out there.

For example, if you have an AI app that turns a TikTok into a recipe, what do people want to see? You can see whether they want a specific social media channel: TikTok, Instagram, or something else. You can see what kinds of foods they mention. You gain visibility into what is going on in their mind as they use the app.

The positive reviews show the things you want to show. The negative reviews show the things you want to make sure you do not do.

That is how Ariel would answer these questions, more than focusing on a specific tool.

Ariel also mentioned that on X, people are putting out AI tools to generate screenshots, and many follow the same critical mistake: they focus on the visual and do a poor job. Ariel feels bad for people using them because they are misguided.

An influencer may say, “I’m going to make a screenshot for you and it’s going to be beautiful.” It might be beautiful, but you can also use a template. Ultimately, it is just design.

Those screenshots are generally not going to be good for app store optimization or conversion, so they can hurt you.

Think about your user, the keywords they use, and the things they want to see. That is what should go in your screenshots.

Q&A: Positioning Against Paprika Recipe Manager

A question asked what keywords and positioning strategies to use to rank against apps like Paprika Recipe Manager in the App Store.

Ariel said the first thing he would do is put that into Keyword Inspector and see what all the other apps are using, not just that app in particular.

Then go into the same view shown earlier, where you can look at all the keywords an app is ranking for. That will instantly show what you can do in order to rank.

Then you can find the right place where your ratings match up, or close enough.

Ariel added that if Paprika is a competitor name and you want to ride that wave, that is a mistake. It may work for a short time, but it will not last long, especially if they eventually get some sort of trademark.

Ariel has been saying for a long time: do not chase competitor names as keywords. It is always a mistake.

Even with something like paprika recipe and Paprika Recipe Manager, where the terms could be understood similarly, it is misleading. That is not how you want to build your business or momentum.

Q&A: Screenshot Testing Matters

A comment said they use Keynote for screenshots, IconCTC, and iMovie for app reviews, agreeing with Ariel’s point that it is less about the tool and more about the output.

Ariel added that the most important thing is to test your screenshots.

Just because you think something looks good does not mean users will like it. Just because a competitor does something does not mean copying a competitor’s layout, colors, specific screens, or anything else will make your users resonate with it the same way.

Always use an A/B test instead of changing blindly.

If you do not have enough traffic, meaning you do not get thousands of impressions every day, that is okay. Let the test run longer until you feel comfortable.

If the result is even, similar, or you do not understand what is going on and it does not look like it is doing anything wrong, you can switch to it. If it shows with high confidence that it is amazing, switch to it. If it shows with high confidence that it is terrible, do not switch to it.

Q&A: Does the App Title in Google Play Matter Like iOS?

A question asked whether the app title in Google Play plays the same main role as iOS.

Ariel answered yes, generally.

The algorithm is pretty much the same when it comes to names because it needs to start somewhere.

Google is more sophisticated. It reads the description and does much more with it, but the name is still the main way Google understands what the app does.

That is why when you look at competitors, they often copy the same naming patterns.

Ariel used TV remote apps as an example. In some industries or niches, like TV remotes, competitors copy and paste a lot. Many TV remote apps look the same, use similar colors, and use names like universal TV remote or TV remote universal.

When an app does one thing and does it pretty much the same way, there is not much differentiation, so everyone wants to ride the same wave. Clearly it works because multiple apps are making hundreds of thousands of dollars, but there is also a long tail.

Ariel searched TV remote and found about 1,300 apps, similar to PDF scanner. It is very busy.

Q&A: Key Advice for a Full-Stack Developer Building Apps

A full-stack developer working on their own SaaS company asked what key things Ariel would recommend to stay on point when building apps.

Ariel said one key thing is what he had been saying throughout the stream: you have to really know what your users want.

Whether you are building SaaS software where business users are the bigger group, or building business-to-consumer software that is TikTok-adjacent or something else, the user is what you are building for.

For apps specifically, especially if your SaaS is app-native or app-first, you have to understand what this user will want. After they search, what will they see on the screen that makes them say, “Yes, I really want this. This is what I need to be using”?

You can learn that from:

• Looking at competitors’ custom product pages.
• Analyzing reviews.
• Looking at competitors that are actually making money.
• Looking at competitors making the most money per download.

Money per download is critical. You might be getting a million downloads, but if users are not paying, are paying very little, or only a small number of users are paying, what are you actually doing?

Just getting downloads is not really relevant, especially when there are so many costs associated with getting downloads, especially in the days of AI.

Think about which competitor is making the most dollars per download. Then scour every single thing they do:

• What paid keywords do they use?
• What do their TikToks look like?
• Do they advertise on Meta?
• What do their organic keywords look like?
• What do their custom product pages look like?
• What name changes have they made, which you can see in the app profile timeline?

Ariel uses the app profile timeline all the time to see what experiments competitors ran in the past for keywords.

All of those things give you a better understanding of the user. That is what you have to stay on top of: what the user wants.

It is easy to get distracted, especially now and especially on social media, where everyone will tell you they know what your user needs and they know better than you, and they are already at a billion dollars in MRR even though they started yesterday morning.

Do not listen to that. Follow the people who are paying you.

If you have enough paying users or enough active users, go ask them what they want. Do not be afraid to ask your users questions.

Ariel said one thing he likes to do is talk to users. Sometimes he sits on Appfigures’ live chat and answers live chats himself. People get confused and ask why he is doing that. The answer is that he wants to understand the end user. He wants to know what is not working well for them and what they might not understand.

Ariel learns a lot, and that comes back into the product. If you have a good process, that will happen even when he is not the one doing it.

Always focus on the end user and understand that user. Learn from the competition what they are doing to serve your user.

Q&A: App Store vs. Google Play for Keywords and Ratings

A question asked about the difference between the App Store and Play Store regarding keywords and ratings.

Ariel said Apple and Google Play are fairly the same, but also fairly different.

Names and Subtitles

At a high level, the name draws the most attention because that is what users see.

Both Apple and Google have a name and something like a subtitle. Google added something similar at some point and shortened it enough that they are kind of identical at this point. They are used in very similar ways.

This is where you tell the algorithm exactly what your app does, because it is where you tell humans exactly what the app does.

For a long time, some developers were against using the name to explain what the app does. They wanted a brand name that made no sense. Over time, those developers realized that is a way to lose money unless you are spending billions of dollars outside the App Store or Google Play to advertise.

Even Dropbox now uses keywords in its name, and everyone knows what Dropbox is to an extent. Big companies realized that at some point, you cannot be pure and say you only want an app name that no one knows.

On Apple and Google, the name is the biggest thing the algorithm and humans see.

Start there. Put your most important keywords in the name and subtitle or short description.

Long Description on Google Play

Things change when it comes to the long description.

Apple does not really read long descriptions. Google does, and Google is very good at it because it has all the technology from reading websites and landing pages for a very long time.

Google wants to see how keywords are used and how keywords reference the app. You need repetition and you need to use the keyword in different ways.

Appfigures has a free tool called Keyword Density Tool. You select your app and it gives you a score. It shows things you are doing wrong, and if something is really wrong, it gives a clear warning.

You can use it for any app, so you can see whether competitors are doing a good job. The ones doing a good job are the ones you can learn from and bring back to your app.

Keyword List on Apple

On Apple, the big thing is the keyword list. Apple plainly gives you a keyword list. Ariel said if you did search engine optimization in the 2000s, it kind of feels like that. Not exactly the same, but similar.

It is a useful tool for developers as long as you know how to use it.

On Apple, use the combination of:

• Name.
• Subtitle.
• Keyword list.

On Google, use:

• Name.
• Short description.
• Long description.

Google needs more keywords and more repetition. App Store success depends on how well you optimize for Apple.

Screenshots as a Bridge

The challenge is that Apple now reads screenshots and tries to determine what is going on in them, extracting text from them.

That is a bridge to what Google does with the long description. On Google, the long description is where you do repetition and use multiple keywords to show the app is really about a keyword. On Apple, screenshots now do some of that.

If your screenshots are not using keywords or descriptive text, they are not going to help you.

Ratings and Signals

Apple relies heavily on ratings because ratings are a public signal that an app is being used by many people.

Apple does not draw a lot from download information or active users because there are many privacy restrictions on the Apple side, and those also extend to Apple. For the most part, Apple is not using that app data to rank apps higher.

Apple uses public signals and signals like conversion rate: how many people saw the app and how many downloaded it. It uses less of things like how many people downloaded and deleted, or crashes.

Google uses that kind of data much more. On Google Play, if you mislead people into downloading your app and they download and delete it, your app can tank almost instantly. Coming back from that is really hard. Crashes and deletions are terrible on Google Play.

Ratings are still important on Google because they are a public signal that something is happening with your app, but they are not as big a signal because Google has so many signals.

Google has inbound URLs, the labels on those links, and it reads reviews and uses keywords from reviews. Ariel thinks that is a huge mistake and hopes Google eventually stops, but Google still does it.

Because Google has more signals, each one gets a smaller share. Apple has fewer signals, so the signals it does have matter more.

These are the main differences. It is not that Apple is easier to manipulate than Google or that Google is easier to manipulate. Both are not built for manipulation. They are built for serving users the thing that will fit them most. They just go about it in slightly different ways.

Q&A: Does Traffic From Reddit or Quora Help ASO?

A question asked whether Apple considers traffic from third-party platforms like Reddit and Quora positive, and whether that could impact ASO positively.

Ariel said he does not know and has not seen that. He has not even heard anyone mention it anecdotally.

In Ariel’s experiments, the source of the traffic does not do anything for Apple. He does not think outside traffic helps Apple ASO, though maybe that is happening more now or Apple will open up to it eventually. He has not seen it enough to say yes, outside traffic is good.

On Google Play, it is good. It is definitely helpful, and something you should always aim to do.

That is why it is important to have a website if you have an Android app, because that traffic can give you more of a boost.

It makes sense: Google wants more people to be in Google Play and not on the web. Any piece of web that drives people to Google Play is a friend. A friend means a boost in ASO.

Q&A: Is Pure ASO Still a Viable Lead UA Channel Without Ads?

A question asked whether pure ASO is still a viable lead user acquisition channel without ad promotion.

Ariel said it depends on what you are expecting.

ASO has limitations depending on the type of app and the number of competitors.

If you are in a niche that is getting visibility, meaning a high popularity score, and competitors are not doing paid user acquisition, yes, ASO can probably be a very good way to start. Ariel said that is absolutely where he would start because it is the starting point for any user acquisition.

If you are in an area where keyword popularity is very low and most competitors are doing paid UA because of that, then no, ASO probably will not help you much.

ASO is great when you are building an app that people are coming into the App Store or Google Play and searching for.

A document scanner or PDF scanner is a good example. TV remote is another. People come into the App Store and ask for TV remote. If the popularity score is high and you can compete, ASO as the main strategy can be amazing.

But if the numbers are not playing that well, if a popularity score like 63 becomes a 7 or an 8 and the apps are all over the place, ASO is probably not going to be it.

In that case, search for other keywords before doing paid UA. If you cannot find any, then paid UA is the way to go.

Closing

Ariel wrapped up by saying Appfigures has many new features coming, and anyone who wants to be in betas should send him an email or comment so he can find them and add them.

He said more cool stuff is coming very soon.

Ariel hoped he answered the questions and showed how he does what he does. If viewers still have questions about a process, a number that makes no sense, or how Ariel would do something, they can drop them in the comments.

Ariel said he will be back in a couple of weeks for a new livestream and encouraged viewers to make sure they are registered for the newsletter.

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