How RankBlob ranks work
What your rank means, where it comes from, and why app store results can differ.
Apple App Store checks
A RankBlob rank is an app's position in the search results returned by Apple's public iTunes Search API — a public search snapshot, which may differ from the App Store app. When you search "hotel journal," Apple returns a list of apps in an order. If your app is the 4th result, your rank is #4. There is no modelling, estimation, or secret sauce in between.
Apple does not publish official rank positions, so this search-result order is an observable search snapshot, rather than a guarantee of what every user sees. We'd rather show you a number you can reproduce yourself than a proprietary score you have to take on faith.
Reproduce it yourself: query
itunes.apple.com/search?term=<keyword>&country=US&entity=software
and count where the app appears. That's the entire method.
What we check
- Up to 200 results per keyword. Apple may return fewer. Each card shows how many results were checked; an absent app is labeled “not in returned results.”
- Free tier: the US storefront, checked live at the moment you run the check, in your own browser. Nothing is cached or precomputed.
- Pro: weekly automatic snapshots of the same data across 170+ storefronts, stored so you get rank history and movement alerts instead of one-off glimpses.
Google Play · Beta
Choose Google Play in the free checker, then search an Android app by name or paste its Play Store link or package name. Checks use the first app-results page of Google Play’s public web search, with US country and English language settings. Featured exact-match app cards are included at the front when Google supplies one.
Each keyword card shows the number of returned apps actually checked and the source snapshot time. We do not paginate this beta to 200 results or infer an absent app’s position. Lookup and search responses are cached for up to 15 minutes. Empty, blocked, or unreadable search pages produce a check error rather than a fabricated rank.
Google Play web results can differ from the Android Play Store app, signed-in results, ads, device-specific availability, and other locales. Apple and Google positions are separate measurements; do not combine them into one leaderboard. Google Play beta is currently free, US-only, and separate from Pro’s Apple tracking, alerts, app ownership verification, and community room data.
The honest limitations
The number is a faithful snapshot of Apple's public search order — but the App Store app is not a perfectly neutral window onto that order. Three things can make what a given person sees differ slightly:
- Personalization. Apple can adjust results based on a user's download and search history, so two people can see slightly different orders for the same keyword.
- Search Ads. Paid placements appear above the organic results in the app. RankBlob reports the organic order — an ad slot doesn't change your organic rank, but it can push your app further down the visible screen.
- Timing and region. Results shift as apps release updates and Apple re-indexes, and they vary by storefront. A rank is a moment in a specific storefront, not a permanent property of your app.
What RankBlob gives you is the neutral, signed-out baseline — the same starting point for everyone, and the only version of the number that's comparable week over week, which is what makes it useful for tracking whether your metadata changes worked.
Why we publish this
Most ASO suites present ranks as oracular truth and never say where the numbers come from. RankBlob's data source is free and public, and our position is that you should know that — it's exactly why the tool can cost $5/month instead of $45. If a rank ever looks wrong, this page is the first place to check why; the second is to run the raw query above and compare for yourself.