Sensor Tower Keyword Analysis Revisited

I'd love to know what caused this sudden loss of keyword performance...

I'm getting that sinking feeling again.

(Statistics from sensortower.com)

Hiatus end

I was just getting going with  Float, having released my first version and maintained it with a few upgrades in its first month. But then the burden of marketing and a full time job, and international travel, and Christmas, and various other excuses, go tin the way.

The end result: a few months with no development and no promotion.

This has had the disappointing consequence of a complete drop off in use of Float, and thereby a reduction in add revenue (from a few pence per month to no pence per month).

I guess I'm picking it up off the ground to try and build something with momentum this time.

What is reassuring though is that a few months of inactivity can limit new users, but it seems active installs can weather the storm:

So I've been hard at work these last few nights on the next major release. And the good news is I've got something exciting to show for it. Last night I played the first ever game of Float 3D:

The only final comment I'll make is... Coming Soon to an app store near you!

Sensor Tower

Becoming an App publisher is no "Field of Dreams."

And by that I mean, "If you build it, they will come" is not a valid moto! I think it's fair to say the making of my first app, Float, was for sure the easy part. Getting it seen is by far a harder task, and something I'm ill prepared for.

I have my app on the devices of a handful of like minded indie developers and family and friends (thank you to all of you!) and some of them are very complimentary. But getting even those people to share or rate or even +1 the app in the play store is hard. As a result, my app lingers way down the rankings, even if you search by its precise name!

So, having stumbled upon Sensor Tower, I've been inspired to focus on the keywords in my app store description.

Sensor tower has allowed me to much more easily establish my ranking for certain search terms (previously I'd have searched and scrolled through 250 apps to determine that I'm not ranking).

It also allows me to track how my ranking has changed over time (See image below, which I'll come back to shortly).

Another really helpful feature is the ability to choose specific competitor apps to track and review their own strategies.

So, I decided I needed to make some changes to my app store description today having viewed my app floundering at 70 in the rankings for searches of "float". I changed the name from "Float" to "Float Tile Puzzle" and added new text to describe the game in more detail, using the terms "Tile" and "Puzzle" a few extra times, as well as "Mahjong" and "Sudoku" once or twice.

The result was not ideal! With the new name, my app instantly plummeted in ranking for search term "float" and did not appear on the rankings for either "tile" or "tile puzzle"

I can only hope the changes will be helpful in the long term. And at least I now have Sensor Tower to help me measure my ranking.

It's not perfect though. The free account is quite limiting (though they do give away a Pro plan to students and indie developers for posting a review of their platform ;))

It also could do with an android app. I couldn't find one (I assume that's not because they haven't optimised their own rankings!) and the web page performs very poorly on a mobile platform.

I hope I can post the image below again soon with a significant bounce back in search performance!