More than a month after the new App Store went online, are all the chart-manipulating companies doomed?

September 20th was a big day for the gaming industry: on that day, Apple officially launched iOS 11 and its revamped App Store.

After the App Store cancelled the best-selling list and changed the list and search algorithms, the way ASO is played is bound to undergo new changes. There is also a saying in the market that "all the companies that manipulate the list are finished now." Almost everyone believes that the App Store ecosystem is about to undergo dramatic changes.

Now that iOS 11 has been released for more than a month, has chart manipulation really disappeared? Has the value of Apple recommendations increased? Is it still possible to get on the App Store trending search? In order to get the answers to these questions, Grape Jun interviewed some relevant people.

Are those who manipulate the charts still doing so?

After the App Store update, the behavior of manipulating the rankings, especially the best-selling rankings, has indeed been controlled to a considerable extent. Grape Jun asked several companies about manipulating the rankings, and only one company said it could manipulate the best-selling rankings, but the company was very conservative: "Manipulating the rankings always has risks. The ranking fees are very strict now, and the best-selling rankings are no cheaper than before. I don't know if you can accept it."

According to Mixpanel data, the current installation rate of iOS 11 is close to 55%, which means that the traffic that products can obtain from the best-selling list is getting less and less, and the demand for game companies to brush the best-selling list has naturally decreased sharply. Grape Jun also asked several publishers who had been on the bestseller list. One publisher said: "We are still researching, and it seems that they are all dead at the moment." Another publisher denied the value of the bestseller list more directly:

However, while the best-selling lists are cooling down, there are still many companies willing to manipulate the free and paid lists , and the prices remain high.

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Xiao A, CEO of a well-known mobile data analysis company, said that after the iOS 11 update, the App Store's free list algorithm has been constantly adjusted. "A few days ago, an app was stable in the top 10 of the category, and the next day it suddenly fell down." In their observation, Apple has increased the weight of app activity in the free list algorithm.

Before iOS 11, we believed that download volume was an important statistical criterion for the free list. Some traffic-buying companies would also advise developers to quickly purchase traffic within an hour. The faster the speed, the more obvious the effect of rushing to the list .

But after the iOS 11 update, we found that even if you purchase the same amount of traffic, your ranking effect is not as good as before. We believe that Apple has increased the weight of user activity in the algorithm. For example, it will look at your activity on the second day, the third day, and so on, and the weight of activity will decrease successively. This change is fatal to many small companies, but it is a good thing for large apps - they have less residual traffic, but user activity may be very high.

Obviously, this change has further increased the cost of ranking in the free list . 500,000 may only allow the App to stay in the top 100 of the free list for half a day. Therefore, companies that dare to impact the overall list mostly have PR, brand or capital needs. "If it's just for traffic, no one will do it." Overall, Xiao A believes that the performance of games that can make it to the free list is still quite credible, while the paid list is still not so credible, "basically half and half."

As the chart-manipulating companies are suffering, some interviewees said that they will no longer be involved in the chart-manipulating business and will instead only focus on keyword search optimization within the App Store. Taking the three hot words " PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds ", "Battle Royale" and "Chicken Dinner" as examples, the prices for manufacturers to rank 1-3 in the search column and maintain them for one day are as follows:

Grape Jun also obtained the price list of another ranking company that does word search optimization. It can be seen that keywords for the battle royale category are already at the top of the search popularity.

Of course, under Apple's increasingly strict scrutiny, even if they are told that they want to do keyword optimization, some ranking companies will not accept orders at will: "Apple is very strict now. We have to look at the package first to know whether it can be applied or not. We cannot guarantee 100% success."

Is the recommended amount too much?

Another major change in the new App Store is Apple recommendations: after weakening the rankings and adding the Today column, everyone believes that the effect of editorial recommendations will become better and better, becoming a very important source of traffic for the product. Is this really the case?

The Soul World distribution team (now the advertising optimization platform YoMob), which has been tracking and analyzing Apple's recommendations for a long time, shared a data report with Grape Jun. Based on the statistical results of a well-known mobile data analysis platform, they listed several tables showing the download volume of Apple-recommended games after the iOS 11 update. Although these data are not necessarily accurate, they still have certain value after comparison with each other.

According to statistics from the YoMob distribution team after the iOS 11 update, 300,000 is now the threshold for weekly downloads of Apple-recommended games: among the more than 10 new games recommended by Apple each week, only about 1-2 games have recommended weekly downloads exceeding 300,000.

All games except ICEY are free

Data for the most recent week was more stable. The recommended weekly downloads of most free games recommended by Apple are between 100,000 and 250,000, with the exception of "NBA".

Taking the above two pictures as an example, the ones marked in red are games with over 300,000 recommended weekly downloads or paid games with extremely high downloads - most of them are products of large publishers and have always been promoted very vigorously; the remaining few are sequels to well-known games and come with their own natural traffic. This may also illustrate the limitations of Apple's recommendations.

At the same time, the incremental effect of Today’s recommendations is not as good as expected. According to statistics from YoMob's publishing team in recent weeks, Today recommendations can bring an average daily increase of more than 15,000 downloads to Chinese free games. However, this data is significantly higher than when iOS 11 was first launched, which may indicate that Today recommendations may have greater potential.

The situation for paid games is even less optimistic - after being recommended by Today, the average daily download increase of several recent games is around 300.

In Grape Jun’s opinion, the current weekly download volume of Apple’s recommended games may be between 70,000 and 200,000. As in the past, the value of recommendations lies mainly in further amplifying the original popularity of the product and providing considerable added value to the brand. Although this amplifying effect may be further increased after the iOS 11 update, if the game manufacturers themselves do not do a good job of promoting their products, the number of downloads of their products may still be limited. In other words, Apple's recommendations still can't solve all your traffic problems.

Is it still so easy to get on the App Store trending search?

In addition to the rankings and recommendations, there have also been many changes in the search situation in the new App Store. Xiao A, CEO of a well-known mobile data analysis company, said that a very important change is the fluctuation of the search index.

Simply put, if the search index of a keyword is above 9,000, the App that ranks first in its search results may correspond to 1,000-2,000 downloads per day. Working backwards, the search index for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is around 9,000, but if your game only has 1,000-2,000 downloads, it certainly won't be ranked first in the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds search results.

Many times you can’t control the volume of 2,000, 3,000, or even 4,000. As a result, developers will have deviations in their estimates of keyword traffic. They believe that by purchasing so much volume, the game ranking will rise and they will be able to obtain corresponding volume. But there are only so many users who search and download this keyword, and they will not pay for your costs.

Xiao A said that in order to solve this problem, shortly after the release of iOS 11, Apple reset the search index of many keywords to zero - this shows that Apple is aware of the phenomenon of inflated keyword search index and is preparing to re-correct the keyword algorithm and pay more attention to the natural growth of statistical games. For this purpose, Apple has also introduced a new parameter: search popularity.

The search index ranges from about 1 to more than 10,000, with the highest being around 10,000 and a few hundred. Most keywords are over 4,000. The search popularity is a number from 0 to 100. This number is younger, more difficult to understand, and will make the algorithm more reasonable. "Now that the US App Store has introduced this parameter, we are advising US customers to refer to search popularity and only use the search index as an auxiliary reference."

According to Xiao A's team's observations of the new version of the App Store, the popularity of keywords is not only related to the search download volume, but also to the "search volume of specific words within a certain period of time." After comparing the search index with the search engine index, they found that the popularity of keywords in the App Store lags behind the popularity of keywords in search engines - because most events will ferment in search engines and then be fed back into the download data of the App Store . So they speculated that, similar to the Baidu Index, the App Store might also count the number of searches for a word within half a month to a month, and ultimately come up with an index as a reference for keyword popularity.

Summary: How to face the new version of App Store?

To sum up, iOS 11 has indeed changed the landscape of the App Store as practitioners expected.

• In terms of rankings, fewer and fewer companies are still manipulating the best-selling list, and the free list, which has readjusted its algorithm, has become much more realistic, and the companies manipulating the list have suffered a certain degree of blow;
• In terms of search, due to the emergence of the new parameter "search heat", the results of hot searches and search rankings have become more natural, and illegal keyword optimization behaviors have become less common;
• In terms of recommendation, although the volume effect of Today’s recommendation is not as huge as Banner and Icon, it has initially demonstrated the momentum of growth. However, the main value of Apple recommendations still lies in amplifying the original popularity of the product. Getting Apple recommendations does not mean everything for promotion.

In response to these changes, Xiao A also gave some suggestions:

1. Make smart use of search. This year, Apple announced at a press conference that 70% of downloads still come from searches, and this number is likely to continue to grow. In addition to keyword optimization, products can also gain traffic with the help of hot search terms. “For example, if the first place is ‘Jungle Battle Royale’, then you can optimize the keywords and optimize the product to the second or third place in the search results of ‘Jungle Battle Royale’.”

Xiao A said that if the subject matter of the product is related to the battle royale and there is no infringement, the developer can actually take advantage of the popularity of battle royale-related keywords, because the "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" keyword is not currently protected by the App Store - keyword protection is easy to understand, for example, the copyright of " Honor of Kings " is very clear, so the App Store will lock the results of this word search. However, the official "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" has never announced plans to develop mobile games , so now is still the time window for this keyword.

2. Seek recommendations. The value of editorial recommendations is growing and is increasingly valued by Apple. In addition to the new game recommendations and special recommendations updated every week, Apple now has an additional Today recommendation spot every day. From Grape Jun’s observation, Today often recommends games that have been online for a long time. This may indicate that Apple cannot find enough excellent products that meet Today’s recommendation standards, and there are still a lot of opportunities in this field.

3. Prepare ASM in advance. Search ADs is a feature that Apple has devoted a lot of effort to. When this feature is launched in China, there will definitely be a short window period. Prepared developers can take this opportunity to obtain additional traffic at a lower cost.

4. Be prepared for sufficient costs. Now more and more game manufacturers are paying attention to ASO, and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Coupled with the inflated search index and the reduction in overall traffic, the cost of ASO is bound to rise. However, app stores are often the destination of traffic, so developers still cannot let their guard down.

Perhaps you will feel that these suggestions are not fresh enough and cannot help your product quickly reach the top of the free list. However, in Grape Jun’s opinion, although the changes in the App Store are huge, these changes only put the App Store back on track and have not changed its essence . For the vast majority of developers, making games solidly and promoting them honestly is always the best way.