ASOdesk: Augmented reality has become more popular than racing and match-3 after the release of Pokémon GO

After the release of Pokémon GO, augmented reality became the most popular subcategory for search queries in the App Store, – the analytical company ASOdesk reports as part of its latest research.

The team ASOdesk.com I did my own research of search traffic in the USA and Russia for games in the App Store – ASOdesk Game Index – and came to interesting conclusions.

Results

The most popular subcategory in both countries is augmented reality (thanks, Pokémon GO). Moreover, a couple of months ago, the popularity of this category was quite low. The graph shows what the augmented reality subcategory would have looked like before, without Pokémon GO, and how it looks now.

In Russia, racing, logic games, card games and physical puzzles are among the leading sub-categories in terms of queries. The most unpopular are runners and educational games. There are almost no search queries in the sub-category of educational games, and this is sad in our opinion.

Interestingly, in the Russian store, most users are looking for games based on queries in English, for example, sniper or runner.

ASOdesk Game Search Index Russia
In the USA, the main sub-categories for requests are physical puzzles, car racing, sports and maps.

Strategies and games in the three-in-a-row genre are the most unpopular.

ASOdesk Game Search Index USAConclusion

As we can see, before our eyes there was a reshuffle of forces in mobile games.

Thanks to the appearance of the Pokemon GO game, the sphere of augmented reality games is gaining huge popularity, both in terms of the needs of potential users (the growth in popularity and the number of search queries), and in terms of investments in this area, in order to make products related to the augmented reality subcategory.

How is the Index built?

To determine the list of the most popular subcategories of games, the company’s specialists used the top charts in each country. Based on the collected data, they identified 16 of the most popular subcategories (not to be confused with gaming subcategories in the App Store itself): Educational, Runner, Match-3, Sport, RPG, Casino, Shooter, Board, Strategy, Fighting, Arcade, Logic, Physical puzzle (a la Angry Birds), Card, Racing, Augmented reality.

Further, for each subcategory, search queries were identified for which users would like to find a game related to a particular subcategory.

For the study, only search suggestions (sagests) of the App Store in the USA and Russia were taken, according to which the Users per Day indicator of the system was calculated ASOdesk.com .

Where do search suggestions (sagestas) come from?

When a user starts entering a search query, he is immediately given a list of suggestions (suggestions). The hints are already ranked in descending order of their popularity, that is, how often users type /click in the suggestions area for this search query, respectively, the higher the query, the more frequent it is.

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