Increased App Rankings Fluctuations

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Black Ops, Jan 29, 2012.

  1. Black Ops

    Black Ops Well-Known Member

    Dec 22, 2011
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    Philadelphia, Pa
    Wondering if any other developers interested in the analytics and algorithms involved in the app world have noticed the following:

    Ranking Increase Indicator

    A ranking increase is normally indicated or forecast by what I will refer to as Tetons.

    Typically hourly rankings may look something like this:
    1pm, 2pm,3pm,4pm,5pm.....
    21,21,22,23,21,22,21,23,24,22.....

    However right before a move up in rankings you will see a pattern similar to the following:
    1pm, 2pm,3pm,4pm,5pm.....
    21,21,22,9,21,9,21,9,9,10,9.........

    The first two 9's in the above sequence will form peaks or Tetons on your hourly ranking graph. Typically the Tetons are in sets of 2 or 3 prior to the "permanent" move to a new rank.

    This pattern had seemed to be a fairly regular and predictable occurrence, until the past 24 hours.

    Over the past 24 hours, i have seen the Tetons coming in sets of 7-12. Rankings literally bouncing back and forth hourly for 12+ hours now in almost every country's itunes store. These wildly fluctuating ranking over such a long period are not something I have seen occur in the past 3 months of observing ranking movements.

    I was wondering if more seasoned developers have seen this abnormal amount of ranking fluctuation before and whether it may indicate anything. Being from an SEO/Analytics background the first thing it brings to mind is an algorithm change in Google SERPs and how this is very similar to how natural search ranking behave when Google is mucking about with that algorithm.

    Any thoughts?
     
  2. mr.Ugly

    mr.Ugly Well-Known Member

    Dec 1, 2009
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    Hehe mr numbers again... Ranking are pretty much unrelevant if you dont weigh them heavily against actual sales numbers.. everything below 3 digit sales gives you wonky rankings due to the huge amount of apps catfighting about the same bottom spots.. So not sure what rankings you are checking but if thoose are sub sub categorie ranks you are wasting your time.
    If thoose are top100 rankings in the us then that would be weird.
     
  3. Black Ops

    Black Ops Well-Known Member

    Dec 22, 2011
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    This is for the thread:

    An hour after I posted this my app went from (19) top 10 stores places in Ipad Dice to (49) Top 10 stores place in Ipad Dice. Saw similar jumps in Strategy category though only into top 100's as that category is a bit more competitive.

    If any other developers are tracking hourly rank changes and saw a similar ranking spike in the past couple hours, please lmk as I am trying to unravel the ranking algorithm.



    This is for Mr Ugly the resident Thread Crapper:

    Ugly (Daniel) what is your goal on here? Apparently it is to comment on every thread without allowing facts to get in the way.

    Is it true you have 2 apps on the App store(neither of which has been updated in over a year), yet 1200 posts on the forums?

    And what exactly are you basing your comments on if you have 2 apps, neither of which are being downloaded, thus creating no analytics to look at?

    Would the fact that my app currently has 85 Top 100 stores places for iphone, and 89 Top 100 places in the iTunes store be enough for you to allow that I may be capturing enough data to share insights that are far more fact based then what comes from your nonstop trolling?

    Must you thread crap on every single thread although you have nothing to offer in the way of expertise, experience, or data?

    You might want to stick to your Hero Academy threads and leave the developer threads to people actually developing and sharing thoughts to make all apps better.

    Every time you post something you prove you know less than I previously thought humanly possible....
     
  4. froggies

    froggies Active Member

    What tool are you using to track your hourly ranking?
     
  5. jhspaybar

    jhspaybar Active Member

    Sep 29, 2011
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    For what it's worth, Foozle just went from 12 stores to 19 in the last 12 hours. Including moves into the top 400 in Canada, UK, Australia, and China. These moves all happened between 7am-8am pacific time and have been flat since first popping into the top 400. As to wether these are sales, I'd hope so, but I can't tell you for sure until tomorrow.
     
  6. mr.Ugly

    mr.Ugly Well-Known Member

    Dec 1, 2009
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    #6 mr.Ugly, Jan 29, 2012
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2012
    You wont unravel the the ranking system from down below.

    Its not ipad dice charts

    Its ipad overall->games->dice and therefore completly meaningless, if you think thoose data are worth anything it shows that you dont see "the forrest because of all the trees".

    You are the one accusing others developers of something not me.

    And cool that you found a search function, congrats. :rolleyes:

    Your problem is you assume too much and know less. Especially about me. If you really want to get an proper inside into the system go here http://www.appannie.com/products/intelligence/ and pay for a subscription to all and every numbers. This can be enlightened. If you cant afford, join with others to pay up.

    And yes i enjoy hero academy, a brilliant little strategy game.. should be something for you with your analytics skills.. at least its easy to quickly accuse other fellow hard working devs to be shills. Thats your style.

    So whats the point of this thread again? Saying there are weird fluctuations at the bottom of the store, bummer. You know the sun is rising tomorrow? Bummer!

    What exactly do you want to unravel? That you need to sell one unit a week in , venezuela to chart?

    Maybe i dont see the point. The goal, the bigger picture. Good luck with that anyway :) cheers
     
  7. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    If you games are outside of the Top 200 overall, you can find they naturally bounce around quite a bit.

    That being said, I've noticed what appear to be some anomalies e.g. for a universal game on iPhone a "big" dropoff followed by a similar bounce back the next hour, seemingly coinciding with the complete opposite happening on the iPad charts.

    Given how closely I'm tracking some of these titles, how high up the charts they are, and the relative stability of their rankings and sales otherwise, I'm just putting it down to a quirk of their ranking algorithm (perhaps for universal games?) and am not worried about it actually affecting sales performance much.
     
  8. Black Ops

    Black Ops Well-Known Member

    Dec 22, 2011
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    Philadelphia, Pa
    While I agree this attempt to unravel the algorithm may be fruitless and folly, I am not going to accept it is based on the word of a German kid with 2 apps.

    The goal of the thread is simply to allow others who are numbers guys and are interested in trying to work together to see if we can glean information about how the apple store works when it comes to ranking games.

    Our conclusion may be it is hopeless to predict anything. However I think the results will be we will gain somewhere between a vague and a fairly decent idea of how apple works their system.

    There is published accounts that someone figured out the ranking system 2-3 years ago and Apple subsequently changed it. For what it is worth this was the finding:

    Ranking = 8*(daily sales) + 5*(day-1 sales)+3*(day-2 sales)+1*(day-3 sales)

    There was another published report stating the formula may be closer to:

    (D1+D1+D1+D1+D2+D2+D2+D3+D3+D4+D5+D6+D7)/13 (D=Day)

    What none of these reports mention is when is this calculated and what is it compared to in order to tell what is hot or not.

    So here is the hypothesis that I am trying to test:

    1) I think Apple tests the ranking twice a day around noon and midnight apple time PST(when I say around I mean the hours around not the minutes). While ranking seem to flutter during the day, they seem to jump during those times more often than at other times.

    2) I think that apple compares the recent sale algorithm (something like one of the ones above) and then compares that to the lifetime average of the app and other apps in the genre.

    So if you recent ranking algorithm score is significantly higher than your daily avg, and/or the avg or variance of other apps in your genre, your app while be singled out for Whats Hot or What's New.


    Would like to know if other developers following daily rankings could see if the hypothesis either fit or do not fit what they see in their analytics.
     
  9. schplurg

    schplurg Well-Known Member

    I have no clue as to the workings of the App Store ranking system. Seems to correlate to sales...? :confused: lol

    However, since you mentioned "What's Hot", I have a combination question/gripe.

    Daredevil Dave has done great and I'm satisfied with all that. What bums me out is that the game is never featured in What's Hot, even in it's own Racing sub-category. Dave has been as high as #6 or 8 in the app store, and has been in the top 50 in racing for over 1.5 years. He was featured upon release and shown lots of love, but ever since then....nothing.

    It wouldn't bother me if I didn't see games that aren't even in the top 100,000 (for a reason IMO) getting featured there routinely. Old ones too, like mine. The game hasn't been updated in forever, but neither have some of these other games. I can't see a reason for never getting featured. Probably wouldn't make much of a difference, but still...more curious than anything.

    Back to the main topic. I haven't seen any of what you've mentioned (OP). I watch the rankings every day but I guess I'm not interested enough in the inner workings. I know that when you're selling only a few hundred copies a day that it takes very little to move up and down the rankings. If you're selling less than that, you're going to jump around in rank a lot, as it takes very few sales to make a big difference.
     
  10. Black Ops

    Black Ops Well-Known Member

    Dec 22, 2011
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    Philadelphia, Pa
    Sorry to hear about poor Dave.

    Be interesting to see what happened if Dave got an update since his daily average is probably fairly low right now compared to what it would get when it hit as a new release again.

    My guess is if you did a new release and supported it with a small campaign for a week, it would have a better chance to show up as what's hot.

    I would agree that many games featured are not good games, but quality of game has nothing to do with this. The only thing Apple picks out by "hand" is what we're playing. Everything else is done by algorithm which means it can be figured out and "manipulated" by those with insight into the algorithmic formula.
     
  11. mr.Ugly

    mr.Ugly Well-Known Member

    Dec 1, 2009
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    #11 mr.Ugly, Jan 31, 2012
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2012
    @lol at the german kid, hehe, i'm not even german and my grey hair tells me every morning i'm no kid either. Its funny how you jump around my 2 personal test balloons because you got

    Actually every programmer i know has his own privy dev account.
    Somehow the short sighted people always think you need to have published names under your own name to have worked at anything on the store :) as if there do not exist teams. Lol ;)


    Also there is no ranking game, sell more rise in rank, sell less fall in rank, that chained together with all the other apps.

    For one to understand it your small data is by faar not enough, therefore i gave you a link where you can get more data.


    As for features thats a complety different beast

    Full main page features are handpicked that is n&n thats no secret to unravel, depending on the feature you get even in contact with on of the mysterious appstore editors

    Whats hot is "quasi" the second tier n&n and usualy successfull drop outs from the former list
     
  12. Snozberry

    Snozberry Well-Known Member

    Jan 21, 2012
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    #12 Snozberry, Jan 31, 2012
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2012
    I agree with mr ugly, I rarely come into this forum category but I've wandered here a few times and every single time I've come in here I've seen this same guy going on and on about his stupid rankings.. It's clearly not a hugely successful game or the dev would have better things to do then sit around looking at his 3 sales all day, and ranking in a dice category isn't a very big accomplishment, especially since its just ipad too, so I don't understand why this guy is flurrying about like he is some sort of app developer goddess, it has made me silently facepalm more than once, so this time I thought I'd say something.
    No one cares about your "big shot" dice game rank jumping around, it's like this guy thinks apple is conspiring against his game and purposely screwing with his numbers. He is probably schizophrenic, seriously.
    He ignores everyone or shrugs off their advice, insults their games then goes on to stroke his own ego and give advice like he is the king of iPad dice category or something.
    Legendary pikpok even responded, and he didn't even realize because he is too self absorbed in himself being the king of dice apps to even notice what's going on around him.

    This spastic kid who is like 14 made a game in game salad and It got higher ranking then this, so I have no idea where the inflated ego is coming from....strange. Maybe his mom keeps patting him on the head telling him what a good boy he is and his head keeps inflating. If he was humble about his very small accomplishment I wouldn't have a problem with it, but parading around here like he is some sort of expert and putting down others is just pathetic, especially when your in no position to insult others, make a game that hits top 50 on the actual charts (not dice lmfao) then maybe you can insult others on their crappy app making skills.


    Not once have you actually TRIED to figure out a formula, instead you just keep pointing out your app is number 80 in iPad> dice (lol) and how your numbers keep jumping because apple is conspiring against you because you are actually getting a million sales a second because your game is soooooo good but they have to hide it by screwing up your numbers because it's top secret, whilst desperately rearranging your tin foil hat worrying that apple is reading your mind and stealing all your other dice app ideas.
     
  13. Black Ops

    Black Ops Well-Known Member

    Dec 22, 2011
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    Philadelphia, Pa
    Ugly- I have the data you pointed out, other apps data, and my data. All I am asking is if other devs who wish to share what they see are seeing the same things or different. To do this I and other will have to post our data and rankings. If you and Snoz are of the mind that that is somehow bragging or self promotion, I apologize. However there are threads about sharing sales data and no one minds them, what is the difference between that and ranking data?
    If you wish to contribute that's great. If not, then what is your point of posting on this thread?

    I will try to start over with you and see where we agree instead of disagree.

    1. Would you agree that if the Algorithm were strictly "sales" then the only apps that would ever be seen in What's Hot, What's New, would be the best selling ones(the ones with the most sales)?

    2. Would you agree that we know that #1 cannot be true because newly released, old releases, best sellers, and apps with hardly any downloads have all been in those lists or are in those lists currently?

    If we can agree on those two points, and we can agree that Apple does not have human beings manually populate those lists in every category, then they must do it by some algorithm or formula. And by our agreement of #1 and #2 above, that formula or algorithm cannot by simply Total Sales, but rather must have some weighted or other components to it.

    For example, in the data I see, no matter what day of the week an app has the most downloads, it doesn't reach it's highest rankings until the day after. Therefore the past 24 hour sales has to be a major component, but it can't be the only component as we discussed in #2.

    So is it some sort of trailing day weighted method others proposed and I copied into the previous post?
    Could they be using some kind of standard distribution pattern or moving x-day avg compared against a norm?
    Could they simply have a big twenty sided die they roll every day and it randomly picks apps to feature making this a complete wild goose chase?

    I think all of the above could be true. The one thing I don't think is true is that it is simply Total sales. Robohero is recent proof the formula absolutely cannot be total sales as I think it is fair to say they had little to no sales when they got featured.

    I completely agree that sales is the major component, but knowing how long the sales are tracked for ranking purposes would allow developers to know how long to run marketing campaigns for in order to increase the chances that their app was features. It would also give a baseline of when you can safely conclude an advertising campaign isn't working for if it cannot generate enough downloads within the tracked ranking time, then it is not an effective form of advertising for that app.

    If we as a community of developers can share data and opinions for the betterment of all of us, I do not see why you would be against me or any others trying to do so. If there is no interest in the analytics or marketing data of apps on this site's forum, I can take the discussion to other analytics forums. It is no big deal.

    Just thought I would see if anyone else here is interest in anything beside just the coding end of app development. I would argue that you could make the world's greatest app but if you can't market it, it is worthless. Likewise, you could make some clone of someone else's original idea, do it poorly in a day or two, market it well and make quite a lot of money.

    Since I come from an seo, analytics, marketing e-commerce background, I see many of the same similarities with the marketing of an app in the itunes store, as you do when you think about trying to bring a new big brand ecommerce site online. And if Google SERP algorithm can be cracked(the most complex and valuable algorithm in the world outside of Coca Cola's secret recipe...), I guarantee the Apple itunes store ranking algorithm can be cracked as well.

    If you see no value in trying, that's cool. But I don't see why that would make you want to stop anyone from trying to do it when any success they may have would benefit you as well.






    SNOZ
    You may want to lay off the Ritalin and get someone to translate this rant into English.

    Did you even take 2 seconds to search for my app to know it isnt just ipad or dice categories? Or maybe do a google search on my company and see if you can find out what background I come from before you wasted an hour of your life with this incomprehensible babbling mess?

    If I could make any sense of this I would respond to it, but this is the forum equivalent to what the mentally disturbed write on their padded walls in crayon. But for your sake I will try....

    I really could care less about where my app ranks or how much it grosses. Quite frankly, it seems you are more interest in that than I am. However I am extremely interested in what makes my app change rank or what leads to more "sales".

    For me this first app is all about experimenting with the marketing. Finding out what works and doesn't work when it comes to listing, updating, marketing an app in the itunes store. I assume it will be a commercial failure. However if in its failure it can teach me 10 things not to do with the next 5 apps I release, then in the end it is a huge success. Basically this is my unmanned moon rocket. If it makes it there great. If it gets back, even better. If it crashes and fails, it sucks but I'll learn 100 things about why it crashed and hopefully that makes the next rocket better.

    Here is the past 10 days of sales for my app. Personally I think posting download figures is more bragging than anything I have done which is precisely why I havent posted it. While I realize my game is no blockbuster, it has had a bit more success than post of the app I have seen people post sales numbers on and I am quite sure some of their apps are better than mine, so this is like a kick in the gut to someone who worked hard on an app that is not seeing many downloads.

    [​IMG]
     
  14. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    Apple populates What's Hot, New and Noteworthy and other featured lists manually.
     
  15. daigamer

    daigamer Well-Known Member

    Oct 30, 2011
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  16. Snozberry

    Snozberry Well-Known Member

    Jan 21, 2012
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    Can't bothered to read that giant wall of text, but I did see your app in the AppStore after clicking a link on your other thread, and noticed it was free. If it wasn't free it wouldnt get any downloads at all, there's always cheapskates hunting for free games, downloading, seeing how crap it is, and then deleting it. So I really wouldn't flatter yourself mate.
    Your ego is hilarious. Mr rainbow!
    It's nice how open you are about your sexual orientation to display it freely as your apple name :) now that's PRIDE! ^.^
     
  17. DomAjean

    DomAjean Well-Known Member

    Aug 25, 2011
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    My god you guys are really childish...
     
  18. daigamer

    daigamer Well-Known Member

    Oct 30, 2011
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    Yeah and thier the developers Hahaha.
     
  19. mr_wexer

    mr_wexer Well-Known Member

    Mar 6, 2011
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    Chill out man, your starting to embarrass yourself. The guy is only trying to crunch some numbers to give himself some piece of mind. No harm done really.
     
  20. Black Ops

    Black Ops Well-Known Member

    Dec 22, 2011
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    Philadelphia, Pa
    Now that somehow a thread intended to be about marketing apps has somehow degenerated into a gay slur based on colors used in App icons, I think it is time to close it.

    I think the Macworld article yesterday proves two thing:
    1. The app store algorithm CAN be broken.
    2. I will not be the first to do it! :cool:

    On a side note the original fluctuations I saw I believe coincided with the return of apps being listed by ORIGINAL publish date regardless of updates. I am assuming others have noticed this change and it is being applied in the app store now.

    I believe on Monday night when Apple shuts down the app store for 5 hours of maintenance, we are going to get a New Ranking Algorithm.

    My guess is it is going to include some kind of triggers to detect unusual fluctuations in amount of download and/or reviews(if interested actually read the info parts of the thread), things that may be used to trick the algorithm.

    Finally if any developers are truly interested in the marketing and/or analytics end of app publishing, feel free to contact me by PM. Clearly this is not a topic that the public can discuss from a dispassionate or objective point of view.
     

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