Take stock of how APP promotion can take advantage of the “frog” craze in various ways!

Following the popularity of the chicken-eating game of "hundreds of people airborne on an isolated island" and the live quiz of " big Vs throwing money around", another new trend of "raising frogs" has swept the country. For a while, all kinds of thoughts about traveling frogs were spreading on Weibo and WeChat Moments . As the genuine Japanese version of " Travel Frog " became popular, various "hot frogs" rushed to take advantage of it and gained popularity, and also made a controversial comeback in the App Store rankings .

How did "Travel Frog" become so popular? How did the fancy "hot frog" achieve a counterattack through keyword optimization? What does the “frog fever” explain about the rules of ASO optimization and Apple’s review?

1. The original frog: Data trend analysis of "Travel Frog"

It was launched on December 6th. In the following month, the ranking of "Travel Frog" was relatively stable, but its ranking in the game list never exceeded the top 100.

On the evening of January 8, an insect celebrity named "Sandieji" with 570,000 followers promoted "Travel Frog" on Weibo. This Weibo post was reposted more than 110,000 times, and "Travel Frog" exploded on social networks for the first time. Judging from the real-time App Growing rankings, January 9th was an important turning point. The data of Travel Frog increased significantly, gradually rushing to the overall and category rankings. Among them, the free game list rose to the top 100, and it has since remained ranked first in the simulation game category.

On January 22, "Travel Frog" achieved its second wave of rapid growth, rising to the top of the APP Store's free list. Looking at the Baidu Index at the same stage, the popularity of the keyword "Travel Frog" was almost zero. It also began to rise sharply around January 22, reaching its peak around January 25, with the Baidu Index exceeding 930,000+. The data curves of WeChat Index , Weibo Index, etc. during the same period also roughly showed similar curves.

After sorting out the relevant news, we found that on that day, Weibo celebrities in several major fields related to this game, such as "food", "photography", and "travel", all recommended this game, and several brand Weibo accounts such as Xiaodu also simultaneously released a wave of "frog" posters. It can be inferred that the spontaneous recommendation of social media was the main reason for the surge in data on that day.

On January 25, Tabikaeru adjusted its ASO optimization strategy, adding new popular Chinese keywords such as "travel frog", "frog traveler", and "travel", further consolidating its position at the top of the free list. The newly added key keywords have reached the top of the keyword ranking on the same day, which shows how attractive they are.

The popularity of "Tabi Kaeru" also led to a surge in the search index for "frog-related" keywords . The cat-raising game that was popular before, due to the high similarity of the audience, the word "cat" was also brought into the spotlight and became one of the key words in the "frog system".

2. “Frog Brothers”: Data Trend Analysis of Frog-related Apps

It was launched on December 6th. As the domestic craze for "raising frogs" has been ignited again, there are many "frogs that are riding on the popularity" in the App Store. We have selected two of the most representative "frogs that are riding on the popularity" and, based on the data tracked by App Growing, have revealed their trajectory of riding on the popularity.

1. Data Analysis of "Travel Frog"

This "Travel Frog" was officially launched on the App Store on January 22. Its common name is "Frog Jump" and it is priced at 30 yuan. The name and logo of its app are extremely similar to the genuine Frog Travel and are extremely misleading. In addition, it covers hot words with a search index of over 10,000, such as "Travel Frog" and "Frog Traveler". At 11 pm on January 23, it quickly rose to the first place on the paid list and the fourth place on the entertainment list. However, at around 8 a.m. on January 24, the game "Travel Frog" was removed from the shelves due to reports.

During the period of listing, based on more than 8,000 user reviews, the profit is conservatively estimated to be more than 240,000. The game's shoddy production, advertising and deceptive nature also led to unanimous negative reviews and caused users to question Apple's review mechanism.

2. Data Analysis of "Traveling Frog - Buddhist Frog Raising Planet"

According to App Growing's real-time ranking monitoring, this game "Travel Frog - Buddhist Frog Raising Planet" was officially launched on the App Store at 2:00 pm on January 24, and its common name is "Planet Jump". In about 6 hours, it reached the 4th place on the free list and the 1st place on the entertainment list in the early morning of January 25. But the good times did not last long. At around 2 p.m. on January 25, the game faded from the players' sight in the rankings, but the keyword records were still there. It is speculated that the game was cleared from the list by Apple.

In terms of ASO strategy , the title of this game, "Travel Frog - Buddhist Frog Raising Planet", is very bold. It adopts the Chinese version of the brand word "旅かえる", plus the popular word "Buddhist child raising" that is widely praised. At the same time, it covers hot words with search indexes exceeding 10,000, such as "Travel Frog" and "Frog Traveler", becoming another "hot frog" with a sudden increase in ranking after "Frog Jumps".

According to the App Growing keyword details function, as of January 25, "Travel Frog - Buddhist Frog Raising Planet" covered a total of 2,719 keywords in China, with 115 search results ranking in the top three and 366 search results ranking in the top ten.

Among them, there are 1,508 keywords with a search index ≧ 4605, 27 of which are in the top three search results and 173 are in the top ten search results, which is equivalent to 20 times the keyword coverage of "Tabi Kaeru" in the same period. The ranking of some keywords of this game on January 25th has an upward trend of ten times or even a hundred times. As shown below:

Data from App growing

Although a large influx of external natural traffic can lead to an increase in keyword rankings, the possibility of ranking manipulation cannot be ruled out.

3. Inventory of the “hot frog” routines

The above two types of "hot frogs" are actually taking advantage of Apple's review loopholes. The game "Tabi Kaeru" is a Japanese product launched in China, and the keywords it covers were mostly in Japanese and English in the early stage.

Apple - Reviewers are mostly in the United States and are unable to fully understand the basic situation in China, resulting in a number of games named "Travel Frog" being released online before or after they were reviewed. However, Apple has also recently been adjusting its algorithms and punishing illegal apps, including the authentic version of "Tabi Kaeru" being mistakenly removed from the charts and then restored to the top of the charts, and the pirated version of Frog being removed from the charts and being removed from the shelves.

In addition to the copycat version of wool-pulling, are there any insights from the "frog fever" for ASO optimization itself? In response to this question, Xiaojie, an ASO optimizer from Youmi, made several suggestions:

1. Use social media topics to drive organic traffic from the App Store

The genuine "Travel Frog" was first promoted by several big Vs in related fields, attracting attention from WeChat Moments and Weibo. It was then re-created by Weibo users of various popular brands (such as Durex ), triggering a wave of photo-editing and ridicule, and then promoted again in WeChat Moments and Weibo. By fermenting social media topics, natural traffic is brought into the App Store from outside. After all, this is faster than the traditional method of simply relying on brushing the charts to achieve ranking effects.

2. Use the current hot words appropriately to gain more exposure opportunities

With the rise of the genuine "Travel Frog", App Growing has also monitored that there are currently a large number of applications using similar keywords such as "Travel Frog" and "Frog Traveler". After all, everyone wants to take advantage of the trend so that when everyone is searching for words like "travel frog", their own app will be ranked higher in the search results. Some apps even cover more keywords related to "frog", even though these words are not highly relevant to their own apps. App Growing believes that it is a smart move to appropriately use the keywords of current popular applications. Some applications that are more related to hot words may be worth a try, and I believe there will be certain gains. But then again, the amount of piggybacking should be controlled within an appropriate range to avoid counterproductive effects.

3. Use brand words carefully to avoid Apple’s punishment

The two games mentioned above were both launched around January 22. In fact, they were purely for the purpose of making money, so they took the risk of adding brand words to the app names, and the logos were extremely misleading. For other apps, it is recommended to use brand words with caution when riding on the popularity of the app to avoid Apple activating the penalty mechanism and avoid losing the big picture for the small.

4. “Hot frog” spreads to information flow advertising optimization

According to App Growing’s ad tracking data, many news and information apps are also taking advantage of the “frog-raising craze” by placing ads in their information flows . The various APPs that try to attract attention are summarized as follows:

1) News and Information

Use strategy points to guide users' attention. Representative applications include Sohu, 360 mobile navigation, and Neihan jokes, which have a high degree of integration.

2) Education and training:

By cleverly taking advantage of the pain point of "not being able to understand Japanese", we recommend Japanese language learning courses with high integration

3) Games:

① Reflect the advantages of "non-frog raising" games, low integration

② Use the common “the frog is not at home” point as promotional point, combine the game scene with the frog to enhance the integration.

Golden Section

This is the end of the "Hot Frog" data insight report

The author of this article @App Growing compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services Advertising platform Longyou Century