Recently, we launched App Listings Databases and API access to them, offering businesses comprehensive information on over 2 million applications listed on Google Play and App Store in the United States. We hope these solutions help you obtain valuable information about apps in the target niche and get an overall picture of the US app market.

For those who aren’t yet familiar with data for mobile app intelligence and app store optimization, we will cover all the essentials in this blog post, starting with the basics. If you feel like a pro in this subject, don’t hesitate to skip the first part.

Contents:

Introduction to mobile application intelligence data
Getting to know DataForSEO App Listings Databases and APIs
DataForSEO App Listings API vs App Info API
Diving into industry use cases for app store market data
ASO software features powered with app listings data

Introduction to mobile application intelligence data

First, let’s talk about what mobile application intelligence data is, what are its types and how to access it.

Mobile app intelligence data can refer to the information collected from within the applications or from mobile app marketplaces. While the first type exposes essential data points for user behavior and app performance analytics, the second type plays a key role in mobile app marketing and App Store Optimization (ASO).

In this article, we will be talking about the second type of data that is collected from app distribution platforms. Accordingly, we will be talking about ASO, so let’s take a moment to explain what stands behind this term.

App Store Optimization is the process of optimizing mobile apps along with their product listings in order to gain higher rankings in app store search results and increase the number of organic app downloads. To improve these metrics, ASO experts analyze various data points to devise strategies that should prove the most effective.

Here are some of the main examples of mobile app data applied in ASO and app marketing analytics:

• Data from app marketplace search results: app ranking positions, titles, icons, and other app data featured in the search results for a specific keyword and location. This information helps to monitor app rankings, track optimization progress, and evaluate the performance of app listing localization strategies.
• Keyword data: keyword search volume, popularity trends, competition. This data helps to choose the best key terms to use when optimizing the app listing’s title, subtitle, description, and other metadata fields. Keyword data is equally useful for picking terms for targeted paid campaigns.
• User feedback data: app reviews, ratings, review texts, etc. Monitoring and analyzing user reviews allows app publishers to identify common issues and feature requests, while also guiding improvements for enhanced user satisfaction and higher ratings.
• Competitor analysis data: basically, includes all of the data types above, but on competitor apps. Based on this information, marketers and ASO experts can conduct comparative analytics of their own product listings, gain insights into potential keyword opportunities and effective app promotion techniques, as well as discover the most compelling strategies to outperform competitors.
• App store market data: the same data points as used for competitor analysis, but on a larger scale instead of insights on individual competitor apps. To be more specific, app store market data refers to large collections of app listings for a specific region, location, or category on a particular app distribution platform (e.g. App Store or Google Play). We’ll dive deeper into the use cases for this data further in the article.

All of these data types from various app distribution platforms are generally obtained with one of the following approaches:

1 Third-party ASO Tools. The majority of ASO tools offer comprehensive app intel inside of their software and allow retrieving the data with the help of application programming interfaces (APIs) to create custom reports on other platforms. If you need to blend app data with other insights in tools like Looker Studio or Tableau, this option might be best for you.

2 Web Scraping. You can gather information by devising a scraping infrastructure and writing scripts that automatically extract the necessary data points from the app stores. However, keep in mind that platforms frequently change their website structure which breaks scraping scripts and requires continuous updates and maintenance while some services may completely restrict web scraping. The scraping process also requires a lot of time and resources, so make sure you consider these factors when making a decision.

3 Commercial third-party APIs and databases. There are also a number of commercial providers that offer consistent access to vast app marketplace data via APIs or offer complete databases based on a certain subscription or payment. These providers gather vast amounts of data, process it and deliver it in a structured format into the client’s data storage, software, or reporting solution, while ensuring accuracy, reliability, and privacy compliance. This option would suit your case better if you need to systematically retrieve vast up-to-date datasets in a stable and consistent manner.

Keep in mind that choosing the appropriate approach depends on your data requirements, technical expertise, available resources, budget, and other case-specific factors. Either way, it’s important to carefully select your data retrieval solution to ensure you get accurate and reliable information from app stores.

Getting to know DataForSEO App Listings Databases and APIs

DataForSEO takes pride in providing true-to-life and steadfast data solutions with strong system uptime and round-the-clock support, ensuring that all of our customers, no matter how big or small, have the necessary tools to stay ahead in the competitive app market.

With flexibility and scalability in mind, we have designed two types of products for accessing and utilizing app store market data: App Listings Databases and App Listings APIs.

Each of these data solutions will empower you with actionable app marketplace insights, providing comprehensive information on over 2 million applications listed on Google Play and App Store in the United States.

Below, we will cover the main product characteristics and outline key differences.

DataForSEO App Listings Databases
App Listings Databases for Google Play and App Store contain extensive details on applications listed in the US stores. The number of listings in our databases exceeds 1.24 and 1.27 million apps for the Apple and Android ecosystems respectively.

The details you can obtain include app IDs, icons, titles, descriptions, categories, ratings, reviews, release dates and notes, similar apps, and more. All of the collected information on app listings is updated every 45 days.

The App Listings Databases are a powerful resource for exploring key niche metrics in the mobile applications market for the United States.

The cost of a database is established based on the number of app listings it contains. Data updates after the initial purchase are available with a 50% discount. To learn more about the costs of our offering, visit the database pricing page.

DataForSEO App Listings APIs
Alongside the release of App Listings Databases, we supercharged our comprehensive App Data API with new App Listings API endpoints for Google Play and App Store. They enable you to seamlessly access the necessary data from our vast App Listings Databases while enjoying the benefits of our practical pay-as-you-go system.

Using the new API endpoints, you can specify a target category and retrieve all app listings falling into it from our databases along with the app IDs, icons, titles, descriptions, categories, ratings, reviews, release dates and notes, similar apps, and more. You will only be charged for setting a task and the number of app listings you retrieve.

Allowing for a granular and cost-efficient data extraction, the App Listings endpoints can align with the app store data extraction needs of projects of any size.

To estimate the recurring cost of App Listings API endpoints and to find out more about the App Data API suite, visit the product page.

DataForSEO App Listings API vs App Info API

If you have already considered our offering on the App Data API product page, you might be wondering about the difference between the App Listings APIs and the App Info API endpoints. Let us clear things up.

The main difference between DataForSEO’s App Listings APIs and the DataForSEO App Info API endpoints lies in the scope of the data they provide and the way the data source is accessed.

The App Listings API enables you to access our pre-collected and regularly updated collections of app listings from an entire category by specifying the category ID.

The App Listings API allows you to receive data on up to 1000 app listings in response to one task. The API endpoints work based on the Live method of data retrieval. Once you make a POST request, this API reaches our database, fetches the data that aligns with the parameters you set, and returns it in response at once. For this reason, the App Listings API tasks are completed in up to 2 seconds on average. However, given that our database is updated every 45 days, the data you receive may be up to 45 days old at the time of the task completion.

The App Info API, on the other hand, focuses on providing up-to-date information about an individual app based on its unique identifier.

The App Info API returns data on a single app listing in response to a single task. The API endpoints function based on the Standard method of data retrieval. Once you set a POST task, the API instructs our system to check the product listing page in real-time and fetch data from it for processing. When the data is ready, the task is considered completed, and you can retrieve its results with a GET request. With this method, it takes from up to one minute to up to 45 minutes to complete a task, depending on the priority you choose (high or normal). Accordingly, the data you receive may be from one minute to 45 minutes old at the time of the task completion.

In summary, the App Listings API rapidly provides comprehensive pre-collected app listings from the App Store and Google Play Store at a larger scale and category level, while the App Info API delivers current information about individual apps taking slightly longer.

Diving into industry use cases for app store market data

App store market data provides a wealth of information about myriads of players in the competitive mobile applications market. But how exactly does it help businesses overcome real-life challenges?

To answer this question, let’s explore some of the key practical applications of app market data.

App Market Research. Having wide app market landscape insights at hand, companies can understand the distribution of apps by category, evaluate market state, uncover potentially lucrative market niches, and identify emerging trends in the target category. This information can then be used to power up app development strategies, improve targeting of specific customer segments, and optimize marketing efforts in general.

Competitor Intelligence. By accessing category-wide data on app descriptions, ratings, and product listing creatives, businesses can perform competitive benchmarking of their app and its product pages on app marketplaces. App publishers can also identify competitors’ offerings, strengths, and weaknesses, and fine-tune their app strategies accordingly.

Market Entry Strategies. New app creators planning to enter a specific category can use app listing data to assess market saturation, identify gaps, and develop compelling offerings based on the number of existing niche apps, their downloads, ratings, and other metadata from existing listings. This helps to formulate effective market entry strategies and ensure that new apps stand out.

App Store Optimization (ASO). Structured app metadata for a target category enables ASO experts to access comprehensive information on keywords, app descriptions, categories, and ratings of similar app publishers. ASO professionals can apply the gained insights for optimizing their app metadata, maximizing the efficiency of their ASO efforts, and enhancing app discoverability.

Sure enough, this list of the use cases for app listings data is not exhaustive. Still, we hope it has given you a sound understanding that navigating the complex mobile app market landscape becomes significantly easier when you have reliable and extensive app store data at your disposal. Read on, if you’d like to learn how this powerful resource accelerates the process of generating insights within specific tools and features.

ASO software features powered with app listings data

As we have already discovered in the Introduction to mobile application intelligence data part, App Store Optimization (ASO) is the practice of optimizing app listings in order to improve app visibility in app store search results and drive more organic downloads. To make this process more efficient, app creators turn to ASO software. These powerful solutions provide instruments that speed up data analysis and enable app publishers and ASO experts to start implementing their strategies faster, as well as track and measure the results.

Some of the ASO software features couldn’t exist if not for the app marketplace listings data. We’re inviting you to explore these features on the example of the Metadata Benchmarks functionality offered in ASO Tools from AppTweak. We’ll also include information on how to develop them based on DataForSEO’s App Listings Databases and APIs.

To begin with, the purpose of the Metadata Benchmarks in ASO Tools from Apptweak is to assist app developers and marketers in optimizing the metadata and creative assets of their applications’ product pages in app marketplaces. This optimization aspect helps enhance the visibility, discoverability, and conversion rates of the app within app stores.

The Metadata Benchmarks functionality includes a number of features.

1 App store icon trends

An app icon is one of the most important creative assets of an app marketplace listing, impacting the listing’s click-through rate (CTR) in the search results. With the help of the App store icon trends feature, ASO experts can quickly evaluate the main colors and elements used in the app icons of top products in the target category and country. These insights into successful design strategies can inspire new better-performing icon styles.

For instance, this feature can help to discover that apps in certain categories tend to use their logo or brand name while in others, like in the Role Playing Games category, the top games mostly display the main character in the icon.

With the DataForSEO’s App Listings Databases or with the App Listings APIs, you can access app icon URLs from the icon field. You can then process the extracted images with a color clustering algorithm or a color extraction API to obtain a palette of the dominating and secondary colors and their distribution in the target niche of the US app store market.

Using the App Listings API, you can specify target categories while the entire database access allows you to filter the data by main_category and category (App Store) or main_category and genre (Google Play).

Note that when working with data from Google Play, you can sort the apps by installs_count while the Apple App Store listings can be sorted by rating.value or reviews_count to obtain a list of top applications.

2 App category screenshot trends

This feature presents software users with visual insights into the prevailing patterns of app screenshots usage in product listings. It allows comparing category benchmarks side by side as well as analyzing screenshot trends from various apps within a certain category or genre on the target app marketplace. Besides displaying the percentage of landscape vs portrait screenshots, it also displays the average number of screenshots used on app profiles in a certain category.

For example, using this feature, app publishers from the gaming niche can discover industry best practices on whether the app screenshots should depict the game in the same orientation as it will be played to improve the visual appeal of their app listings.

By using the images field from the DataForSEO’s App Listings Databases or the App Listings APIs, you can retrieve app screenshot URLs to further analyze them and produce a similar feature for comparative analysis.

Using the API, you have the flexibility to define target categories while having the full database at your fingertips, you can filter out the data by main_category and category (App Store) or main_category and genre (Google Play).

3 App pricing trends

The App pricing trends feature displays the average, highest, and lowest pricing benchmarks of the top paid apps by category. Using this data, app creators can examine the pricing strategies of apps from a specific category, understand the price cap and determine the optimal price to charge for their application.

To give another example, with the insights from the screenshot above, a Word Game developer can estimate potential revenue by reviewing the maximum price for the apps in the niche.

DataForSEO’s App Listings Databases and App Listings APIs will serve you with information about the pricing of apps in the US Google Play and App Store in the price object of each listing. The is_free parameter will also flag true if an app is available for free or false if it’s offered on a paid basis.

You can extract data for the necessary categories and also complement pricing insights with app popularity by displaying the number of downloads or user ratings, or by providing a correlation between the installs or ratings and the app price.

In summary, the AppTweak’s Metadata Benchmarks functionality we reviewed leverages app store listing data to help ASO experts optimize various aspects of their listing’s metadata, as well as spy on competitor strategies. Some of the available features we did not go through include the category-wide average number of characters in app titles and descriptions and average app sizes. The Metadata Benchmarks functionality is offered starting from the Scale plan for $659/month.

You can devise similar features for your ASO software and potentially increase your price baseline by accessing the app metadata from the US Google Play and App Store with:

DataForSEO’s App Listings Databases for App Store and Google Play Store
App Listing endpoints within the DataForSEO’s App Data API suite

Don’t miss the opportunity to elevate the capabilities of your software and gain a competitive edge with our powerful and cost-efficient resources of app marketplace data!

Conclusion

As we have covered in this blog post, data on app listings is used in market research, competitor intelligence, and app store optimization, as well as in the development of crucial ASO software features.

Stable and reliable access to app marketplace data is key for obtaining valuable insights into apps within the target niche and gaining a deeper understanding of the app market landscape.

Our recently introduced App Listings Databases and APIs provide businesses of any size with the possibility to get comprehensive information on over 2 million applications listed on Google Play and the App Store in the United States.

To get started on your journey to mobile intelligence data, learn more about our new products and review data samples by visiting the documentation:

• App Store Listings Database
• App Store Listings API
• Google Play Listings Database
• Google Play Listings API.

Create a DataForSEO account now to unlock the full potential of app listings data from the world’s leading marketplaces!

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