So 6 months of hard work building my first Flutter mobile app. I release it on the Google Play store (and Apple store) and it ain’t showing up on search. So what gives?
Searching for my app but it’s no where to be found
The app is called English Fox (it also has a Chinese name 英狐狸), it’s an English-Chinese dictionary to help people learn English. You can find the direct link here and see for yourself. Searching by its full name still gives no results. I can accept if searching for “English Dictionary” does not display it in any of the top spots (after all I just released it) but I would expect it to appear when entering the apps name?
This burns because I paid money to be on the Google Play store (paid the sign up fee) so I would expect more visibility. I’ve had friends and others tell me they couldn’t find the app on the store, so this obviously is hurting my marketing efforts quite a lot.
Possible explanations
Let’s dig into some reasons according to my searches:
If you are a developer and have just released your app, it can happen because Google Play needs some time to index your app to add it to search results. Try to search your app later (in 4-5 hours). E.g., for App Store it takes around 24 hours.
So it’s been about two weeks or more on my end. I’ve double checked the keywords, pushed updates, people have been downloading it. What gives?
More installs may help speed up indexation (including indexing for your own title), so running a few paid campaigns around launch. Having good user retention for queries (again including your own title) will help to maintain those rankings.
People have been downloading and using the app. But to be honest not a lot but isn’t this a chicken and egg problem? How can you prioritize indexation based on how many people are using the app if no one can find it? I would expect the app to show up somehow. Or is this an attempt to get more money by pushing devs to paid advertising?
You may want to include your title in additional areas to build stronger relevance overall. A few additional areas to consider: App ID, Short Description, and Long Description.
This is a good tip but doesn’t explain why searching the exact title of my app still doesn’t return it as a first result.
Some more info here on Stackoverflow.
The good old days
I remember launching Flash games around 2007 on the web and getting hundreds of thousands of plays within the first week. All you had to do was get on the front page of a popular website and you’re golden. If you didn’t get so lucky, you could still make it by just posting it around various websites and it’ll slowly build visits (of course you’ll send it around a bit). Then people from playing the game would then find your website (because you added links inside the Flash game) and then you can get their emails and build a community. It was so easy back then.
Now you need a to be approved by these app stores and they determine how much visibility your app gets, and then the person needs to install your app. Also let’s be honest, it was less friction to play a Flash game back then, all it took was one click on a link and you’re playing the game. Nowadays you need to visit the app store, search for it, download the app, wait, wait, then load it up etc. It’s not as streamlined as before.
Anyway if anyone knows what’s going on please let me know.