1. App Store keyword popularity
How good is AppCod.es
popularity ranking algorithm?
or, “why we’re better than
Google Adwords Keyword tool”
by AppCod.es
31st August 2012

2. AppCod.es
AppCod.es shows you
an estimated App Store search query popularity
but how confident are we about it?

3. AppCod.es
How else can you estimate the keyword popularity?
- common sense ;)
- compare it to Google Adwords Keyword tool
http://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool
- compare it to the Chomp App Search analytics
http://chomp.com/etc/chomp-charts/jan-2012
- see whether a phrase appears in hints in the App Store

4. AppCod.es
Let’s compare these tools.

5. AppCod.es
Puzzle Games
In top search queries in
the Chomp’s report

6. AppCod.es
Puzzle Games
In top search queries in
the Chomp’s report
Not so popular according to
Google Keywords tool

7. AppCod.es
Puzzle Games
In top search queries in
the Chomp’s report
Not so popular according to
Google Keywords tool
common sense suggests Chomp is right

8. AppCod.es
our result
like Chomp says - a very popular query

9. AppCod.es
Education
• not a good search query
• too general
• people rather look for more specific things

10. AppCod.es
Education
• not a good search query
• too general
• people rather look for more specific things
• nevertheless Google shows it high

11. AppCod.es
Education
• not a good search query
• too general
• people probably rather look for more specific things
• nevertheless Google shows it high
our results for comparison

12. AppCod.es
Education
• education less popular than Angry Birds? makes sense.
our results for comparison

13. AppCod.es
Reddit
• our estimate - ~380k Reddit users have iPhone
(5,5M users according to Google Planner * 7% iPhone owners)
• Reddit is probably less popular than Chrome, or a flashlight app
Google Adwords AppCod.es

14. AppCod.es
A different approach
the popularity by AppCod.es
how many people downloaded top
apps found for a given search query
(using Xyologic data)

15. AppCod.es
We’re not perfect

16. AppCod.es
We’re not perfect
• some of our data sources are >1 month old,
so if a query is very fresh, we’ll display a lower rank
• some of the queries are missing from the
database. if we show “-”, it probably means the query
is unpopular, but in rare cases we just have no data
• a difference of 20 in hotness may be a
statistical error (i.e. if one phrase is 40, and
another is 50, we really don’t know which one is more
popular)

17. AppCod.es
Keep in mind
- the phrase popularity is still an experimental feature
- it’s better to rank top5 in the not-so-popular
phrases, than rank top15 in the most popular ones
- iterate, iterate, iterate.
with every update remove the worst performing phrases
and try some new ones. if it’s possible, ask users how they
find your app.

18. AppCod.es
If you have some interesting data points, data sources, or
have some feedback regarding the algorithm - let us know.
support@appcod.es
AppCod.es
The Swiss Army Knife for App Store Optimization