Hi all, I'm curious how it is determined what rank in the App store charts an app launches/debuts at? I've noticed on Appannie's stats for various games that they all debut at different ranks? Some debut at 800 or so, some debut in the top 50...just curious if anyone knows how this initial rank is decided? Do Apple just decide out of the blue what it should debut at or...? Any ideas/suggestions? thanks in advance.
Very likely the starting rank is based the amount of sales you saw in the first 1-3 hours of being on sale. If you have an enormous amount of hype, and release at a set time, I can see how you'd get a crazy amount of sales right after your game goes live. The result is you end up in the top 50 as soon as you're chartable.
Yes, that's correct (at least as of a year ago when I last checked). Everybody starts off at the bottom of their category, and then moves up based on sales. If initial sales are great, it can look like it debut'd higher, but that's more a limitation on the tracking software's granularity than anything else. ie if it only scans rankings for all apps on the iTunes store every X hours, it can miss the initial movement making it seem like it started off higher.