I swept 59 keywords across 6 App Store storefronts. My app ranks for exactly 2 — and both are just my own title.

Short summary

An indie developer discovered their iOS app ranks for only 2 of 59 tested keywords across 6 App Store storefronts — both hits being just the app's own title words. The root cause was twofold: the app is effectively unindexed for its category vocabulary, and their rank-tracking script was silently inflated by 15 positions due to an unexamined User-Agent header. The broader lesson is that measurement instruments can be quietly wrong, and disagreements between your own tools are findings, not noise.

• •App ranks for only 2/59 keywords across 6 storefronts; both are just the app title
• •Rank-tracking was 15 positions optimistic due to User-Agent header variation in iTunes API
• •Search engine site: queries from Azure Tokyo IP were silently blocked or misdirected, producing false negatives

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.