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. Each record contains app metadata, a per-keyword ranking array, a per-chart category ranking array, and run-over-run deltas.

Top-level fields:

Field	Type	Description
appId	string	Apple App Store trackId of the app.
found	boolean	true for a normal record; false on a marker record (app could not be resolved in the storefront).
error	string | null	Reason code when found is false (e.g. app_not_found_in_storefront, no_valid_targets). null otherwise.
trackName	string	App name.
sellerName	string	Publisher / seller name.
country	string	Storefront country code used for this run.
primaryGenre	string	App's primary genre name.
primaryGenreId	integer	Apple primary genre id.
averageUserRating	number	Average user rating across all versions.
userRatingCount	integer	Total number of ratings.
currentVersionRating	number	Average rating for the current version.
currentVersion	string	Current version string.
currentVersionReleaseDate	string	Release date of the current version.
price	number	Numeric price in storefront currency.
formattedPrice	string	Localized formatted price (e.g. Free).
isFree	boolean	true when price is 0.
trackViewUrl	string	App Store product page URL.
keywordsTracked	integer	Number of keywords requested.
keywordsRanked	integer	Number of tracked keywords the app ranked for within searchLimit.
bestKeyword	object | null	The keyword with the best (lowest) position this run: { keyword, position }.
avgKeywordPosition	number | null	Mean position across ranked keywords.
keywordsImproved	integer	Keywords that moved up vs last run.
keywordsDropped	integer	Keywords that moved down vs last run.
keywordsLost	integer	Keywords that dropped out of results (not_ranked) vs last run.
keywordRanks	array	Per-keyword result (see below).
categoryRanks	array	Per-chart category result (see below).
ratingDelta	object | null	Rating / version movement vs the previous run; null on the first run.
isFirstRun	boolean	true when no prior state exists for this app + storefront.
scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of the record.

Each keywordRanks[] entry: keyword, found, position (1-based, or null if outside the top searchLimit), totalResults, topCompetitors[] (up to 5 apps ranked above you: { position, appId, trackName }), and a delta.

Each categoryRanks[] entry: chart, genreId, genre, found, position (or null if outside the scanned chart depth), chartSize, and a delta.

ratingDelta: { averageUserRatingChange, userRatingCountChange, versionChanged, previousVersion }.

{
    "appId": "281796108",
    "found": true,
    "trackName": "Evernote - Notes Organizer",
    "country": "us",
    "primaryGenre": "Productivity",
    "averageUserRating": 4.4,
    "currentVersion": "10.x",
    "keywordsRanked": 3,
    "bestKeyword": { "keyword": "evernote", "position": 1 },
    "avgKeywordPosition": 12.3,
    "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", "genreId": 6007, "found": true, "position": 37, "chartSize": 200,
          "delta": { "current": 37, "previous": 41, "change": 4, "improved": true, "status": "up" } }
    ],
    "ratingDelta": { "averageUserRatingChange": 0.0, "userRatingCountChange": 120, "versionChanged": false, "previousVersion": "10.x" },
    "isFirstRun": false,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-22T..."
}

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

Not-ranked and not-found are still recorded. If an app doesn't rank for a keyword, that keyword entry has found: false / position: null — the app's record is still written. If an app can't be resolved in the storefront at all (bad ID, region-restricted, or an Apple outage that survives all retries), a marker record with found: false and an error code is written instead. The Actor never finishes with an empty dataset and never hard-fails on a transient Apple error.

Scheduling

Run it on Apify's scheduler (e.g. daily at 9am). Because state persists between runs in a named key-value store, every scheduled run gives you a clean "what moved since the last run" view of your keyword and category rankings. On the very first run there is no prior state, so deltas are new/null (isFirstRun: true).

Pricing

Billing follows the Actor's configured Apify pricing model and your platform plan. The workload is lightweight — plain HTTP calls to Apple's public endpoints, no browser and no proxies — so runtime and resource usage stay low. Cost scales with how many apps, keywords, and charts you track per run (roughly one dataset record per tracked app).

Limitations

• Ranking depth is capped. Keyword rank is found only within searchLimit (10–200; Apple's search endpoint caps results at 200). An app ranked below the scanned depth reports found: false / position: null, not its true deep position.
• Category charts cap at 200. Apple's storefront RSS top charts return at most 200 entries; an app ranked below categoryChartLimit (50–200) in its genre shows as not in chart (found: false).
• One storefront per run. Rankings are storefront-specific and the run tracks a single country. To cover multiple storefronts, run once per country. There is no separate language axis — results follow the storefront's locale.
• Point-in-time snapshot. Each record reflects rankings at scrapedAt. Deltas are computed against the previous run's persisted state only; there is no historical time series inside a single record.
• Static fetch, no personalization. The Actor reads Apple's public JSON endpoints only — no headless browser, no logged-in/device-personalized ranking. Public storefront search can differ slightly from what an individual device shows due to Apple-side personalization and A/B variation.
• Per-store rate limits. The Actor self-throttles (~50 req/min) and backs off on Apple 429/503, so large keyword sets take longer rather than failing. Sustained Apple rate-limiting or outages can cause individual lookups to return not-found for that run.
• Category rank needs a resolvable primary genre. If Apple Lookup doesn't return a primaryGenreId for an app, category ranking is skipped for it (keyword ranking still runs).