

Show HN: We'll guess competitors’ keywords,we'll predict your App Store position - kolinko
http://blog.appcod.es/we-will-guess-your-competitors-keywords-we-will-predict-your-app-store-position/

======
lordlarm
The article says that the app store ranking algorithm is more or less known
and is linking to the following presentation:

<http://www.slideshare.net/kolinko/app-store-seo-tutorial>

Which does not actually say anything about the actual algorithm, just tips and
tricks for indie apps and SEO.

It would be the same as saying the Google algorithm is known and then link to
some SEO tricks.

~~~
kolinko
Perhaps the link to the presentation wasn't too fortunate.

The app store ranking algorithm is quite well known, and the presentation also
includes information about it. In brief - first go the apps with search query
in title/publisher name/in-app purchase names, then apps with search query in
keywords. The sales are used as a tiebreaker.

The problem is in the details & special cases. And that's what we more or less
figured out :)

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jcfrei
I have still no clue how you guys are pulling this off. are you spidering
descriptions of apps inside the marketplace? maybe look for similar keywords
in different languages? or do you have actual access to search queries?

~~~
kolinko
In short (i'm on mobile) we're guessing the keywords an then verifying them
with apple.

~~~
dot
verifying them with apple = typing them in to iTunes?

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iseff
We've been working on a similar idea for a few months now, and have some
pretty solid data and sophisticated algorithms which are now giving us quite
reasonable insights. We support iOS App Store and Android Market. We want to
really focus on _how to get better_ at organic distribution within the app
stores (e.g. what keywords _should_ I focus on based on my competition and,
most importantly, where the search volume is in the app stores).

TechCrunch wrote about it a couple weeks ago and since then we've been on a
tear (thousands of signups representing tens of thousands in monthly revenue):
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/aso-app-store-
optimization-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/aso-app-store-optimization-
is-the-new-seo-and-heres-a-tool-to-do-it/)

App Store Optimization (ASO) is a big deal today, and is going to be a HUGE
deal shortly. The growth of mobile is just too much, too fast for search not
to become massively important. You can see Apple bet on this fact with its
acquisition of Chomp recently.

Even more broadly, there are too many players in the mobile app ecosystem who
are searching for ways to help app marketers get distribution through various
paid means, but not enough (virtually none) who are searching for ways to help
app marketers get distribution through organic (unpaid) means. Yet this is
exactly where the vast majority of downloads come from.

We want to focus on the organic side of app distribution: search, rankings,
social/sharing, earned media, web landing pages, etc. All things that help app
marketers promote their apps without paying per download. Marketing channels
that really scale. It's the SEO/social/viral channels for mobile.

Check out our product at: <http://www.mobiledevhq.com/aso>

And always feel free to email me with any questions, ever:
iseff@appstorehq.com

~~~
kolinko
Thanks for the reply iseff, it's always nice to hear from the competition :)

I totally agree that ASO is going to get huge. There is also an interesting
"fight of tools" coming up, as there are many ways to organize the whole
process, and no "right one" discovered yet.

For example our tool (<http://www.AppCod.es>) has a totally different
interface from yours, and we offer a different set of functionalities (like
for example the prediction tool and the keyword guessing module), while of
course there is plenty that we can learn from you :)

What I also think is that a good tool should not only track your position in
the store, but also help - at least a little bit - with your PR actions.
Suggest & teach you how to get the word out about your app.

Cheers! :)

------
kolinko
We spent the last 2 weeks analyzing the intricacies of the App Store rankings,
and here are the results. Questions more than welcome :)

~~~
lusr
Nice bit of data mining but the data doesn't seem quite right -- an unusual
balance of foreign keywords that seems quite surprising to me at least (look
at "Smurfs' Village" for instance)?

~~~
kolinko
This is because apple's search has approximate match, so a word like
"historiska" will cause the smurfs village to be found if they used the word
"history" in their keywords. For example, try searching in us store for
"historiska centex" - it will find smurf's village. Also, some apps seem to
simply use Spanish words as well, for example google uses "busca", which is
Spanish for search if I'm not mistaken. In u.s app store search for "google
busca" will find google

I'm on mobile, sorry for formatting etc :)

------
kevinh
Poker games have some _weird_ results, like having numbers for keywords. Is
this some way of gaming the system or a bug?

<http://www.appcod.es/appsearch/poker>

~~~
kolinko
More like an "artifact" :) You can actually find the poker apps by using these
weird keywords, but I doubt they appear in the keyword list.

In case of the apps with in-apps our system cannot distinguish between a
keyword from the in-app, and a keyword from the keyword list. Also, Apple uses
fuzzy matching, so if a poker app has an in-app like "Stack of 22,000 chips",
our system may try to guess that one of the keywords is "22ch".

Finally - usually the big players don't use keywords for promotion, but the
more traditional PR techniques. It's interesting to watch their keywords, but
it's far more interesting to see how the little players (i.e. your
competition) perform.

~~~
kevinh
Interesting. Thanks for the response.

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f137
Checked a few games for which I know what the keywords are.

I would not say it is completely of the mark, for all games it guessed 1-2
keywords correctly (out of 10-15 it suggested). Long way to go.

~~~
kolinko
Can you send the keywords/games which didn't work to support@appcod.es? And
how did you check whether the keywords worked? This result seems below our
average.

------
f137
> We will guess your competitors’ keywords.

Sounds great - but how can I check if it works, before opening a real account?

~~~
83tb
Try it here: <http://www.appcod.es/appsearch/>

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nirvana
Interesting. I checked their guess of keywords against one of my apps. They
guessed 13 keywords for my app. 5 of their guesses are most assuredly not in
our keyword list.

However, of the remaining 8, 5 of them are pretty general keywords (that most
of our competitors use.)

But the really interesting thing is, three of our keywords that were guessed
are ones we consider "proprietary" as they relate to unique features of our
app, that our competitors are not using.

That's a pretty impressive result. You got some that I think no human would
likely figure out. But you also had some guesses that are way off the mark.

Very interesting!

~~~
kolinko
Thanks :)

