App Store Rank Tracker — Apple Keyword & Category Ranking (ASO)

Track exactly where your iOS app ranks in the Apple App Store — for the keywords that matter to you, in its category top charts, with run-over-run deltas so you can see whether your ASO work is actually moving the needle.

Built for app teams and ASO agencies who need a cheap, reliable, scriptable rank tracker without standing up scrapers or paying enterprise ASO-tool prices.

What it does

For each app you give it, every run reports:

• Keyword ranking position — the app's 1-based position in App Store search results for each keyword you track, plus the apps Apple ranks above you (your direct ASO competitors for that term).
• Category rank — the app's position in its primary-genre top charts (top free / top paid / top grossing).
• Rating & version snapshot — current average rating, rating count, current-version rating, current version string and its release date, and price.
• Deltas since last run — every keyword position and category position is compared to the previous run: did it move up, down, stay flat, go lost (dropped out of results), or is it new? Rating and version changes are tracked too.

State is persisted in the Actor's key-value store, so as long as you run it on a schedule (daily/weekly), each run shows movement vs. the previous one.

Data source — 100% real, zero-auth Apple APIs

This Actor hits Apple's own official public endpoints — the same ones apps.apple.com uses. No headless browser, no proxies, no third-party scraper, no mock data. Output is fully input-dependent: different apps / keywords / countries return different real rankings.

Signal	Apple endpoint
Keyword position	itunes.apple.com/search?term=...&entity=software&country=...
Category rank	itunes.apple.com/<cc>/rss/topfreeapplications/limit=200/genre=<id>/json
Rating / version / price	itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=...&country=...

These endpoints are free and require no authentication or API key.

Input

Field	Type	Description
appIds	array	App Store numeric IDs or full app URLs to track.
keywords	array	Keywords/phrases to look up each app's ranking position for.
searchTerms	array	(Optional) App names to auto-resolve to IDs when you don't have the numeric ID.
country	string	2-letter storefront code. Rankings are storefront-specific. Default us.
charts	array	Category charts to check: topfree, toppaid, topgrossing. Default ["topfree"].
includeCategoryRank	boolean	Include category top-charts rank. Default true.
searchLimit	integer	Search depth per keyword, 10–200. Default 100.
categoryChartLimit	integer	Category chart scan depth, 50–200. Default 200.

Example input

{
    "appIds": ["281796108"],
    "keywords": ["notes", "note taking", "todo list", "evernote"],
    "country": "us",
    "charts": ["topfree"]
}

Output

One dataset item per tracked app. Key fields:

{
    "appId": "281796108",
    "trackName": "Evernote - Notes Organizer",
    "country": "us",
    "primaryGenre": "Productivity",
    "averageUserRating": 4.4,
    "currentVersion": "10.x",
    "keywordRanks": [
        {
            "keyword": "evernote",
            "found": true,
            "position": 1,
            "totalResults": 22,
            "topCompetitors": [],
            "delta": { "current": 1, "previous": 2, "change": 1, "improved": true, "status": "up" }
        }
    ],
    "categoryRanks": [
        { "chart": "topfree", "genre": "Productivity", "position": 37, "chartSize": 200,
          "delta": { "current": 37, "previous": 41, "change": 4, "improved": true, "status": "up" } }
    ],
    "ratingDelta": { "averageUserRatingChange": 0.0, "userRatingCountChange": 120, "versionChanged": false },
    "isFirstRun": false,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-22T..."
}

In delta, change is positive when the app moved up (toward #1). status is one of up / down / flat / new / not_ranked.

Scheduling

Run it on Apify's scheduler (e.g. daily at 9am). Because state persists between runs in the key-value store, every scheduled run gives you a clean "what moved since yesterday" view of your keyword and category rankings.

Pricing

Pay-per-result: you're charged a small fixed amount per app ranking record written to the dataset. Tracking N apps = N records per run. No proxy or compute surprises.

Notes & limits

• Apple's storefront RSS top charts cap at 200 entries — apps ranked below 200 in a category show as not in chart.
• App Store search results are storefront-specific and can vary slightly by region/device; this Actor uses the public storefront search, which is what most ASO tools track against.
• The Actor throttles itself (~50 req/min) and backs off on Apple rate limits, so large keyword sets simply take a little longer rather than failing.