Hi! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, let's
look at some of the ways you can examine the
optimization of other apps on Google Play.
Alright, so a couple of weeks ago, I was having a conversation with somebody
about ASO. When we're talking about the the main tenants of ASO, you know, the
title, the description, the keyword research, all that
kind of stuff. And he came back to me and asked about some of the apps that
we're ranking really well on Google Play and said, "Hey, how come this app over here
is doing really well for these keywords? But the keyword isn't in the title or
in the description that much or is it in the title but it's not that much in
the description. And there's other apps with the same title in the same
description, so I thought, "Well, let's look at it because there's so many
factors that you can't see immediately." And it turned out that
this application had like tens of thousands of reviews. It was like it
has obviously millions of downloads so it was doing really well.
I didn't even look to see how many backlinks were going to the Google
Play page. There's so many different factors at play. All you had to do was
point out a few of them to see why they were doing really well as opposed to the
other ones you could compare them that way. Now, it's not an exact science
because we don't understand exactly how the search algorithm works. But we know
some of the things that are important because Google tells us that they're
important. Like having a lot of backlinks that go to your page with those keywords
in them, having that - having it in your title. Having reviews is
perfect because you gotta think about how Google Play works, like they want
that when you're searching for something. They want to give you the best thing
possible, that way you continue to use it so they're gonna base that based on the
reviews. So, if I'm going for a keyword, let's say I'm gona go for the keyword
"spy", which I do, and I released a new app and there's another one out there
that's got a hundred thousand reviews positive or negative, then my
new one, just because I put "spy" in the title is not necessarily going to work.
So, in another tool that I use, is the Wayback Machine to look at
because that taught - that keyword might not be in the title anymore. So, let me
show you something here that I know I've mentioned this before, but one of the
tools that I use and when I when I use the research in this one is - ah, is the
Wayback Machine, which you probably know about if, you want to look at web - what
web pages look back - look like way back in the day. So, first, let me show - have a
look at my screen over here. Let's take a look at Google Play.
I'm gonna do the thing I do, I've done this in so many videos I do, but I'm
gonna type in m search term here, which is spy, and I used to come in first.
Ear Agent is my app here. I used to come in first all the time and now, this
other ones come up first. But, you know, at first, that was bothering me a little
bit, but I don't have spy in the title anymore. It used to be called Ear
Spy, then I changed it to Ear Agent, so the other one that has spy in the title,
it's got a lot of downloads, all that kinda stuff. So, fair play to it. But if I
show you over on AppAnnie under the ASO section in the US, I still got the top
slot there. Yeah, I'm not too worried yet, but eventually, it's
gonna - eventually someone's gonna knock me off the top spot for that keyword. So,
anyway, if you have a look at my description here, you see we've removed
spy from the title last year. It was - it's been over a year now and
we've removed it from everywhere, it's still in the screenshots, but that's
not being indexed, so... And we only have the word spy once here in the
description. So, we removed it from everywhere else but it's still
ranking really well. Now, the reason for this is because we have a whole lot of
reviews. We have 40,000 reviews nearly 41,000 reviews. They're not all positive,
but a lot of them mentioned the word spy. We also have links all over the place
that are pointing toward that, you know, links going to Ear Spy from -
that we've put out there, that other people who reviewed the
application have put out there, and they all have the word spying and all those
links are coming in to Google Play there too. So, that's helping a lot.
There's lots of different factors at play here. Now, if you're not sure - if I
show you like, if you're trying to look at an application and try to come up
with theories as to why they're doing so well, one of the tools that I use a lot
is the Wayback Machine because things could have changed in the title. Like I
said, mine used to have the word spy in the title and it doesn't anymore. It's
still ranking for the word spy. So, if you were just coming across it now and you
didn't know that you might be thinking what what's going on here, why
is he - why is that working, if I just - so I just take the - copy the URL
here and go to the Wayback Machine which is archive.org slash web (archive.org/web)
and I paste it in my history, and those of you, guys, who know what this - how this
works and everything will not be too surprised, but you see, you know, the first
occurrence of this was back in 2013. It was released in 2012, but the first
one we have here is 2013. I'll go and the first snapshot we have of it is June.
There we go and so, you should be able to see like my very pathetic, first
description and an install here. So, we've got the old-style Google Play. We've got
my thing up here at the top and we've got my screen shot. We've got my
description and I think back then, I was asking people to leave - I think, I was
asking peple to - I may been asking people to click on ads,
which open - which I quickly found out I wasn't allowed to do so I removed that.
You see my screen shots here, let me just - this is
something we need to talk about more because this is another big thing that a
lot of people aren't doing. They're putting, including screenshots that are
just on their app. So, here you see, back in the early days that have three
screenshots, one was Ear Spy on or Ear Spy off/Ear Spy on and the save
as dialog that pops up. Alright, not not too many ratings but
it was what it was. So you know, if you go back here, you'll see the word spy
all over the place. You'll see these terrible screenshots and of course, you
know, our downloads really picked up. We started optimizing things a lot
better. Start to put the backlinks out there that was really big,
but that's such a difficult one to measure. Like you just, you know, I
find it difficult to measure. And make the nice video up here and if
somebody hits on this page, we want them to see exactly what the app does. Not you
know - one of the things that I found early on was that nobody reads the
descriptions, but they look at the screenshots and if they can't figure out
from the screenshots what the thing does, then they probably would just move on
And you could tell that from your analytics on Google Play. You can see if
you have a lot of people visiting the page, but not a lot of download, you can
say you have to work on your screenshots and all that kind of stuff. Then in
screenshots, they're part of the ASO. They're part of the whole
thing, the methodologies that somebody have, but they're not - they're not the
early part. So, the first bit is being found in search.
People actually learning about you're out, but once they do and they get
to this page, you know, and they don't download, there's something wrong with
the page. You have to go through and think what's not enticing about that. And
one of the things that we did on all of ours was having a annotated screenshot.
So, not just the screen shots of the app itself, but actually what it does and
some - some nice big bold claims and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, so
if you're trying to reverse engineer another application and see how they're
being so successful. Again, there's things there that you might not even be
able to see. There's some things you could you pick out by the -
they could have been mentioned by - led by a major blogger, like you know - with
Flappy Birds, it was the fact that PewDiePie played it and everybody ran to
it. There's nothing to do with ASO or anything. It happened that it became huge.
Or it could be, it could be - that could have been in the news, it
could have been related to something topical at the time, and it got that
momentum to get started. Or they could have just been spending a lot on ads for
it. So, anyway, I hope it helps a little bit. Do you have any other tools that you, guys, use?
If you try to reverse engineer this kind of stuff, I'd be really interested to
know. Anyway, that's it for today. I'll talk to you, guys, tomorrow.