Today’s exercise is simple but insanely powerful:
Find competitors who are ranking in the Top 10… despite having very few ratings.
Why?
Because when an app with low social proof still ranks high, it means one thing:
Their Title + Subtitle combo is perfectly aligned with Apple’s current ASO algorithm.
Your job is to collect at least five of these “low-rating, high-ranking” apps and study what they’re doing.
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How to find them
You can use a tool like Astro, which is one of the most affordable ASO tool.
- Go to Astro.
- Enter a competitor app name. You can mention the most famous app in the category.
- They will be ranking for hundreds of keywords.
- Click on the app list for each of the keywords.
- A popup appears. Check for the app with lowest rating in the list. Here you can see an app with just 47 ratings ranking at top. You can also check their release date to know whether they are recently released or not.
Repeat this process for more keywords. Now you will have atleast 5 apps with low ratings ranking at the top.
What to study
Look at their Title and Subtitle patterns and note:
- Are they placing the app name first or the keyword first?
- Are they repeating a specific word in both Title and Subtitle?
- Are they ranking for the word they’re repeating?
This is one of those small exercises that leads to huge clarity. No theories, no speculation – just real data from real apps ranking above you.
