What drives iTunes App Store search rankings?

3Feb/109

What drives iTunes App Store search rankings?

Many developers wonder what drives their iPhone app's search ranking in iTunes. After all, one of the key methods of product discovery is searching for an app that a user would like to download. Read on to learn about four important factors that affect an app's App Store search ranking.

1. Keyword and Name Relevance

The strongest driver in an app's search ranking is the relevance of its keywords and name versus the search query. For example, if I search for "Vampires Live", I get the following results.

Note that the search returns "Vampires Live" over "Vampires Live - 55 Loyalty Points", even though "Vampires Live - 55 Loyalty Points" is more popular than "Vampires Live".

Why does this happen? Because the query "Vampires Live" is ranked to be more closely to the Vampires Live app name without the "55 Loyalty Points" text attached.

2. Price Tier

An app's price tier affects its search ranking. An app with a higher price tier ranks more highly than an app with a lower price tier. For example, take a look at the search results for "IM".

The top two search results are priced at tier 10 ($9.99) even though there are more popular apps and more highly-rated apps in the search results.

3. App Rating

A great aspect of the app store is that an app's rating affects its search ranking. For example, let's look at a query for "Reward Points FREE". This query pulls up four Zynga apps.

Compare this to the list of Zynga's most popular apps.

So why did Street Racing 23 Reward Points FREE 1.60 (which is #5 in popularity rank) not show up in the search while Mafia Wars 22 Reward Points FREE showed up?

Take a look at the ratings for Street Racing 23 Reward Points FREE 1.60,

and compare them to the ratings of Mafia Wars 22 Reward Points FREE.

4. Popularity

The final variable we're taking a look at that affects search ranking is an app's popularity. Consider iFarm by Playmesh and iFarm 10 PlayMesh Points, two of PlayMesh's most popular apps.

iFarm by PlayMesh is rated 2.5 stars,

and iFarm 10 PlayMesh Points is rated 3.0 stars.

Now let's look at the search results for the query "iFarm".

Note that even though it's the lower-ranking of the two apps, iFarm by PlayMesh is listed before iFarm 10 PlayMesh Points. That's because iFarm by PlayMesh is vastly more popular than iFarm 10 PlayMesh points.

With the knowledge of these four factors that drive iTunes App Store search rankings, you'll be able to get even more downloads for your apps by increasing their search ranks. Know of any other factors that drive iTunes App Store search rankings? Let me know in the comments!

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Filed under: Marketing Leave a comment

home builders ranking

This does still seem to be effective in achieving a ranking for certain keywords. ...

home builders ranking

With iTunes preview pages ranking so high in search results, ... Apple's move to go with HTML content in the app store and the new preview ...

ejodoin

Thanks Alex, we are about to launch 5 apps and we are trying to understand the algorithm for ranking. This was a great help.

txeet

One lesson I learnt on keywords: "template" != "templates"

The app store search seems to deploy an exact matching of search terms. In the release of my app, i have the keywords "sms,templates,..."

I should have "sms,template,templates,..." to cover for user who search without the 's.

eliafreedman

This is an interesting discussion but clearly daily sales (or a rolling average over 'x' days) has an impact as well. Can you comment on that?

Alex Miyamura

You're absolutely right that daily sales and a rolling average have an impact. They're two variables that determine Popularity (factor #4). I'm not sure of the exact equation used by the app store to determine popularity, but do know that it is some sort of weighted average involving daily sales over some time period. I'd love to hear more details about the exact algorithm, though.

Marketing Your App

Thank you for the very interesting and useful post. The examples you show are most helpful.

Andrew Jakubowski

Interesting post, but as there are four factors, which one has the biggest "weight"? Which app is higher in search results, a 2-star medium-popular $9.99 app or 4-star higly-popular $2.99 app? I guess the thing to learn here is that it's worthwhile producing high-quality, highly rated and premium priced apps. But then again, the popularity of $0.99 apps may bury it...

Alex Miyamura

Thanks Andrew!

In my experience, the weights are as follows:
1) Search term relevance (in the title first and then in keywords)
2) Price tier and ranking (about the same effect)
3) Popularity

Taking your example and assuming that (hypothetically) the search term relevance were the same, I really couldn't say. There is an interesting effect with rankings and price tiers, though. I believe that most people who look at higher price tier apps would be more meticulous about making sure that the app is both high-quality and fits their needs.

I definitely do think that the take home point is that there's an incentive to build high-quality, highly rated, and premium priced apps - both for the developer and for Apple. Unless the $0.99 apps are extremely popular and have similarly high ratings, I don't think that the more high-quality, premium-priced apps would be buried. In fact, I've noticed that usually ratings for lower price tier apps are lower since they're much more palatable as impulse buys that may not meet the purchaser's needs or expectations.

- Alex

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Alex Miyamura co-founded a successful iPhone and Android app development company in 2009. In less than a year, he helped grow the company to employ 6 people and saw its apps reach millions of users. Read more about me.

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