How to Track App Store Keyword Rankings and Read Them
Knowing where your app ranks for the phrases you care about turns app store optimisation from guesswork into an experiment you can measure. Here is what to track and how to read it.
What a keyword rank is
A keyword rank is the position of your app in the search results for a phrase. Rank 1 is the first result. If you are not in the first couple of hundred results, most tools show "200+" or "not ranked".
Position matters because most people never scroll far. Being in the top three for a phrase with real demand is worth far more than being fiftieth.
Rank is per storefront
The App Store and Google Play rank separately in each country. Your rank for "budget planner" in the United Kingdom is unrelated to your rank in Germany. Track each storefront you care about, and in the language people there use.
Track every day
A single check tells you where you are; a daily history tells you what is changing. With a day-by-day line you can see the effect of a listing update, a competitor's change, or a seasonal shift, instead of guessing.
Separate noise from movement
Rankings wobble. A one-or-two-place change in a single day is usually noise. Look for:
- A change that holds for several days.
- Many phrases moving the same way at once, which points to something real such as a listing change or a competitor update.
- Movement near the top (from 12 to 4) rather than deep in the results (from 150 to 140), because the top is where installs come from.
Read rank with demand and difficulty
Rank alone is not enough. Pair it with how many people search the phrase and how hard it is to rank for. A top-ten rank on a phrase nobody searches adds nothing; a rank of 25 on a high-demand phrase is an opportunity, because a small improvement could bring many installs.
Watch your competitors too
Track the same phrases for two or three competitors. When one of them jumps, look at their listing for what changed. When you rise past one, that is a sign your change worked. Seeing the field, not just yourself, makes the numbers meaningful.
What to do when a ranking drops
- Check whether you changed your listing recently, and whether it still contains the phrase.
- Check whether a competitor changed theirs or whether a new strong app entered.
- Look at the other phrases. If everything fell, suspect something broad; if one phrase fell, it is specific.
- Wait a few days before reacting to a single-day dip.
Doing it with MetricNudge
The Keywords tool records your rank for every tracked phrase in every storefront you choose, every day, with volume, difficulty, the top results and your competitors side by side. The Overview shows what moved this week and what to add or change. You can start with 25 tracked keywords on the free plan. For how to choose the phrases in the first place, read App Store keyword research.
Try it on your own app
MetricNudge tracks your keyword rankings in every storefront, shows your app's analytics, and writes a plain-words plan of what to do next. The free plan needs no card.