iPhone App Ranking Tools

by Brook Lenox on June 19, 2009

tools-lots1Recently Pinger’s iPhone app Picfree was getting close to dropping out of the top 100 paid apps.  I needed a tool to track its progress whenever that happened. 

In my research, I found two types of tools:
1) Tools to track app store sales and
2) Those to track app store ranking.

 

iPhone App Store Sales Data Tools

These tools automatically download your app store sales and equip you with various charts to understand trends.

AppFigures
AppSales Mobile
AppStatz
AppStore Clerk
AppViz
My App Sales
Heartbeat

I found these in a great post, Sales Stats Tools for iPhone Apps, by Mark Johnson. You’ll find a bunch more detail in his post.

iPhone App Ranking Tools

Then I looked into these 4 ranking tools.

Applyzer
AppRanking

MajicRank
Mobclix

Each had different strengths, but I especially liked APPlyzer, and started using it.  APPlyzer is a web based app ranking tool that is currently free really inexpensive. 

Its features include:

  • Ability to track category and overall ranking by country
  • Charts of past seven days by category and overall by country
  • Top 50 worldwide list

What I liked:

  • It’s web based
  • Very simple interface
  • Easy to track both my apps and my competitor’s apps

I hope they’ll add the ability to:

  • Look at several apps at a time
  • See charts by various date ranges
  • Receive alerts when an app passes a certain rank

Here are a few screen shots:

Rankings by Country for Picfree 

applyzer-rankings

Photography Category Ranking for Picfreeapplyzer-picfree-category-chart

 Overall Paid Ranking for Picfree

applyzer-picfree-overall-chart

  

  

  

  

  

 So that’s about it.  Let me know what you think of APPlyzer or these other tools.

Want more help? - I think you’ll find my How to Market iPhone Apps eBook quite helpful.

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE – 10/23/09

  • Someone mentioned in the comments Top Charts  and Kukapp. Both seemed to have promise, but a ways to go.
  • I liked Top Chart’s “Big Jumps” and “Big Drops”, but couldn’t look up the current rank, and found that dissapointing.
  • Kukapp’s concept (monitoring, history, analysis, etc) was intriguing, but I couldn’t easily find info on features and pricing.
  • UPDATE – 9/4/09

    • Since the orginal post I’ve been able to connect rank changes to PR, in app promotions, ad spend, and price changes.
    • By having all that data you can better estimate whether a certain change (say a price reduction) will or will not give you a positive ROI.
    • I wrote this post over 2 months ago now and continue to use APPlyzer daily.

    Photo credit: flattop341

    { 14 comments… read them below or add one }

    Michael June 19, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    Hi,

    thanks for reviewing APPlyzer. I have changed the design a little and soon more functions will be appearing. I will see that I can implement all wishes to become a little helper for all App developers.

    Regards
    Michael

    Brook Lenox June 19, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    Michael,

    Thanks for the quick response. I really like APPlyzer and think it can be a great help to developers. Keep up the good work!

    Cheers,
    Brook

    Michael July 25, 2009 at 3:01 am

    Hi Brook,

    In the mean time APPlyzer.com has changed and has got new features like hourly rankings, Top1000 for Free and Paid and a new design. Soon there will be coming more features.

    Best regards
    Michael

    Brook Lenox July 31, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    Michael,

    I agree APPlyzer.com is coming along quite nicely. Please let me pay you to track some of my free apps hourly! :)

    Brook

    Farrell October 20, 2009 at 12:17 am

    Cool! If my staff want a free site or app for checking ranks or downloads, which one I should recommend? How about the new sites http://www.kukapp.com or http://www.TopAppCharts.com?

    Brook Lenox October 23, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    Farrell…It’s not free, but APPlyzer is almost free. Couple of bucks a month per app and Michael Dorn the creator has been really quick to get back to me whenever I have a question. That’s my recommendation.

    Pedro Martins November 25, 2009 at 3:53 am

    very good information, thank you.

    Brook Lenox November 25, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    Pedro,

    You bet! Feel free to come back.

    Brook

    Rabab Gomaa January 5, 2010 at 2:57 pm

    Hello Brook,

    Thanks for the article. It is very useful!
    Any tips or links regarding how to increase the ranking of apps.?

    Thanks,
    Rabab

    Brook Lenox January 6, 2010 at 3:51 pm

    Rabab,

    I’d encourage you to read these two articles:
    Free iPhone app marketing
    How to market iPhone apps

    Good luck!
    Brook

    Rabab Gomaa January 7, 2010 at 9:01 am

    Thanks Brook. Actually after putting this comment, I started reading your other posts in the blog and I found myself reading all your blog posts :)
    You share very good knowledge and a lot of your experience.
    Thank you!

    Brook Lenox January 7, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    Rabab,

    Thanks for the stopping by and the nice comment.

    Good luck,
    Brook

    Srdjan January 16, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    Try the free app ranking monitor application from the http://www.theblueplum.com.
    It gives you app rankings from other iTunes stores – not just from the US store.

    Brook Lenox January 22, 2010 at 3:13 pm

    Srdjan,

    Thanks..I’m always looking for better/different ways to track iPhone apps. Have any plans to track more apps? I’m tracking about 25 every day!

    Thanks,
    Brook

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