Where is my traffic surge coming from?

Hello,

I have always struggled to find out all the ways my apps are discovered and what increases/decreases their download rate. Obviously I am aiming for a particular keyword or keyphrase when I launch an app and I can monitor how I am ranking for it. I can see from Google Analytics my downloads broken down by app store, country, OS etc. and I can tell from App Annie how I’m ranking in different countries for the different game genres on the Google Play store e.g. top arcade games. App Annie also shows if I am featured on the Google Play front page.

Numerous times in the past I have seen a, say 50% or more, increase or decrease for daily downloads which has lasted from a couple of days to a couple of weeks but normally settles back down to where it was. Does anyone have any insights on how to find out where the majority of the download traffic is coming from and why it would change drastically?

I have had yesterday, a rather delightful and inexplicable, surge in downloads for one of my apps.

The daily users was between 80 and 120 all the way from the start of the year to March 4th. And then March 5th - 489, 6th - 842, 7th - 648, 8th - 33,284

Yes, 33,284 users yesterday (Sunday)

The new users had pretty much the same geographical breakdown as on normal days ~60% USA, ~10% UK, ~30% rest of world. They are all from the Google Play Store. I have checked App Annie for how the app is ranking for keywords and by category and whether it is featured in Google Play. It isn’t featured and there is no change in ranking (although not sure how quickly this is updated) except for a fall in the main keyword (in my opinion) from 16 to 74 on March 5th. I have also googled my app name to see any recent activity and checked google news - nothing.

I expect this massive surge in downloads will subside over the next week and return to the usual unimpressive figures. Is there any way to find out what is going on here?

[Apologies if this post is in the wrong forum - wasn’t sure which one it should go in]

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Today is woman’s Day so laws were lifted where Woman can finally go on the google play app store and download apps so they downloaded everyone’s apps in huge numbers. :slight_smile:

I would think your app is appearing in related apps section for a massive app.

Do you mind sharing the app link?

You might have been featured (a big one), sometimes it does not appear in Appannie. I had a similar experience, (from 100 to 2500 downloads/day) and it was that i had been featured. Since it was featured in a different country then mine, i only knew because another user let me know.

It can’t be a big feature, because big features are only on Thursdays.

@lee:
Did you see any improvement in your income yesterday? Can you confirm these users are real and not just a bug in Analytics? I mean, that are 33.000 new users in 1 day after all.

Most probably being featured. Also, it took time for appannie to update the ranking.

Good point there

Oh yes, there was a big income spike from Admob interstitial ad (this is the only ad unit in the app). Before March 5th revenue was between £0.50 and £1.00 per day. Then March 5th - £3.68, 6th - £5.92, 7th - £4.84, 8th - £260.57.

I have noticed an increase in reviews, as you would expect, about thirty left yesterday and today (that I can see) compared to 3 in the last 3 months. A suprising amount of them have instagram account names in (about half). They have ‘instagram’ as the title, and then only an account name in the body. Or no title, and just an account name in the body. I have never seen someone leave a review with just an account name before, or even put an account name anywhere in the review.

I’m thinking maybe someone with a very popular instagram may have posted that they like my app? Or can you discover android apps directly through the instagram app? And is that why when you leave a review it just auto-posts your account name? I’m very confused here, number of new users today is still crazy high although not on target to be as high yesterday. 6pm here and 7,700 new users so far today.

Some of my Instagram reviewers have responded to my messages and said they found it on Google Play Store, but some have also said they found it on instagram where people post ‘check out this app and you could win an iPhone 6…’ type thing. This shouldn’t be the case for my app since I have not paid for any advertising but who knows, perhaps someone with a big instagram did just, organically, decide they liked my app and posted about it.

Additionally, I don’t know if it’s chicken or egg but I have started to feature on the ‘casual games’ list quite highly in USA and Canada, which I imagine will have quite a lot of traffic.


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some advertiser on instagram ran a promotion and either:

  1. misspelled their app name
  2. has an app similar to yours

instagram users went and searched for his app but found you instead.

congrats on free exposure :slight_smile:

What app did you have and what are its stats now?