ASO News: What’s Causing Sudden Changes to Google Play Traffic and Keywords?

This is a developing story and we will continue to update it as we understand more.

Around May 24, the ASO dream team here at yellowHEAD spotted a sudden drop in the amount of Google Play store listing visitors and acquisitions. Around the same time, we also noticed a similar sudden decrease in the number of branded keywords for many of our partners.

What’s Causing This Issue?

There has been a lot of chatter within the ASO community about what might be causing this change. Below are some of the discussions that have been most common among ASO professionals.

1. Google Core Update: This decrease could potentially be related to the May Google Search core update change and we see that Google is now showing fewer results per branded keyword. For example, branded searches are now only getting minimal results, followed by related searches. After that, the user must click “more results” to see additional app suggestions. This results in lower traffic, downloads and conversion rates. Additionally, these apps won’t be as visible in the store.
2. Attribution Bug: A drop in traffic for branded searches has been noticed across multiple apps within different categories and markets. However, keyword ranking and search popularity scores have remained stable.

We’ll continue monitoring these changes, but let us know if you’ve experienced similar issues.

Speak with the ASO Experts at yellowHEAD.