What is a chart?
A chart is one store, one storefront, one category, one kind and one device.
The App Store chart feed answers 100 apps and Google Play answers 200, so a chart ends there. An app outside that depth is not in the chart, the same rule category ranks follow.
Each row keeps the title, developer and icon its storefront showed on that day, so an older capture reads the way the chart looked then.
Every filter lives in the page address, so a link to a chart on a day opens that chart on that day. On a phone, the country, category and comparison sit behind Filters.
Where do captures come from?
A chart is captured once a day, and one capture serves every workspace on the instance.- Your apps. The daily run captures the free, paid and grossing charts of every category a tracked app sits in, and of the overall chart, for its home storefront. Your category ranks are read from the same capture, and an app is still judged only against its own price class and grossing.
- Followed categories. Press Follow category and the daily run captures the three charts of that category every day from tomorrow, even when none of your apps is in it. Following writes nothing to the store until the next run. The plan counts a category once however many of its kinds the workspace follows. Followed charts lists one entry per category against the plan’s limit, opens any of them and stops following one.
- Capture today. When today has no capture, Capture today fetches that chart while you wait and shows it. Each column and the table carry their own button, and the empty state says what a capture costs on your plan.
How do you read movement?
Each row compares its position with an earlier capture. Pick the window with Compare: the previous day, 7 days ago or 30 days ago. The comparison is the newest capture at or before the chosen day minus the window, and no older than one more window, so a 7 day comparison reads a capture between 7 and 14 days earlier.
The trending panel lists the climbers, the new entries, the fallers and the apps that dropped out of the chart since the comparison, up to ten each. Beside the three columns it switches between the free, paid and grossing charts. In the table it sits beside the chart on a laptop and stays in view while you scroll. Sort the table by Change to read the new entries first, then the biggest climbs.
How do you act on a row?
- A row that is one of your apps is badged Yours and links to its overview.
- A row you track as a competitor is badged with the app it competes with and links to that app’s competitors.
- Any other row offers a plus button that adds it as a competitor to one of your apps on the same store, with a menu when you track more than one. The competitor is checked in the searches its app already runs. See Track competitors.
- Every row opens its listing in the store.
What does it cost?
A refused capture or follow costs nothing. See Rate limits for how the allowance is counted and The daily pipeline and rate limits for the budget.
How long are captures kept?
RETENTION_CHARTS_DAYS defaults to 365 days. Set it to 0 to keep chart history forever. See Configuration reference.
Troubleshooting
- A day has no capture. Nothing asked for that category that day: no app of yours sat in it and nobody followed it, or the run shed category work under pressure. Follow the category so the daily run keeps it.
- Only the first 25 rows show in a column. A column lists the top 25. Open the table for the rest of the chart.
- An app you expected is missing. It is outside the depth the store answers: 100 on the App Store, 200 on Google Play.
- A category is missing from the list. The list follows the categories Apple and Google Play chart today. Kids is an age band on the App Store, not a chart.
Related
Follow category ranks
Your own position in the charts over time.
Track competitors
Compare titles, keywords and positions with the apps you add.
The daily pipeline
What the daily run captures and what it costs.