Look at the top apps in your category

To understand your competition, you should look at the top apps in your category. Top charts are a great way to see which apps in your industry are successful and identify the best-in-class apps you might want to compare with.

To select the right apps, you should look at apps that are in the same playing field as your app. Checking the description and screenshots of apps that are in the same industry as yours can help you refine your selection.

In addition, if you want to focus on apps that have a comparable performance as yours, you may filter your competitors’ pre-selection by removing the apps that don’t have the same range of downloads.

Find competitors through keyword searches

Sometimes, it might not be relevant to compare your app or game with the top players in your category. In this case, you can find more relevant competitors by analyzing which apps rank on your brand name or target keywords.

For example, if you have developed a farming game, find out which other apps rank on the keywords “framing game” or “raise animals.” These might be the real competitors you are up against.

You can make this research easier with AppTweak’s Live Search feature. Start with doing a live search on your brand name, keywords that describe your app’s core purpose, or terms that drive most of your downloads and see what other apps are ranking for. Among the results, try to understand why they are ranking there: Is the app content similar? Is it a game or an app? What is their app power? Does the app use the same keywords as your app in the title?

Some app store categories are simply too broad, which makes it difficult to compare your app with other apps in the category. A typical example of that is the “Lifestyle” category on iOS, where you can find apps about astrology, religion, dating, wallpapers, and all kinds of interests. You can use featurings on the stores to identify smaller clusters of apps within a category.

To find competitors for your apps using Featured Apps, look at the groups or collections where your app was featured and then explore the other apps listed. As can be seen in the following example, featurings can cluster very specific app types.

Research competitors through “Similar Apps”

Another way to find competitors using AppTweak is with our “Similar Apps” feature.

To do this, either look at the apps that are recommended in the “Similar Apps” or “You may also like” section of your product page/store listing. Or else, you can also look at the apps that point to your app through the Similar Apps section of their product page.

Apple Search Ads and Google app campaigns

With Apple Search Ads, it is possible to bid on other brands (Google doesn’t place ads on brands). For Apple Search Ads, you can see which apps are attacking you on a particular keyword. While for Google app campaigns, the apps are placed by Google and apps can’t choose the keywords. This means that these apps might not be attacking you directly. Nonetheless, it can still be interesting to have a look at the apps to understand why Google placed that app on this keyword.

This article first appeared on AppTweak