ASOdesk Game Index: in the “strategy” sub-category, 90% of search traffic is the exact names of games

What percentage of mobile gaming traffic is accounted for by brands, and how many percent of users are looking for games by genre, – she said App2Top.ru in its latest research, ASOdesk.

ASOdesk has divided all the traffic that game projects receive from search into two types: branded and genre. The branded type of search traffic is those downloads that are provided by users who have entered the name of a specific project into the search. The genre type of search traffic is generated by those who found and downloaded the game, having previously written a specific genre in the search.

For example, Need For Speed is a branded type of search traffic, and “racing” or racing is a genre.

The most “branded” search sub-categories were “physical puzzles” (Angry Birds and Cut the Rope), “augmented reality” (Pokémon GO) and “strategies” (Game of War and Clash of Clans).

In these subcategories there is a significant concentration of brands with large marketing budgets/virality, so 90% of search traffic in “puzzles” and “strategies” are the exact names of games.

In the Fights subcategory, a large share of branded traffic (here its value is 71%) is pulled by Mortal Kombat and Injustice (fights between characters from DC comics).

For runners, brand traffic is responsible for 69% of all search traffic. This is despite a large library of very popular projects in this genre (Subway Surfers, Temple Run, Sonic Dash, Despicable Me: Minion Rush and others).

“Logic” and “card games” have become “anti-brand” but popular genres among users. There are not so many famous brands (those that users are meaningfully looking for), but due to the popularity of these games in the physical world, users download virtual replacements for fool, solitaire, crosswords, Sudoku, etc. 2048 does not count.

Interestingly, the top search subcategory queries and top search queries for game titles do not match by genre. Top 3 subcategories by traffic – maps and races. Top 3 games by traffic – FIFA – sports, Mortal Kombat – fights and Angry Birds from the genre of physical puzzles.

This discrepancy may indicate the possible absence of unambiguous leaders in these subcategories (but in no case, not the absence of competition or products). The absence of leaders within a niche is always a chance.

How is the Index built?

Recall that to determine the list of the most popular subcategories of games, the company’s specialists used the Russian iOS top chart. 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, search queries (brands and non-brands) were identified for each sub-category, according to which users would like to find a game related to a particular sub-category.

For the study, only search suggestions (sagests) of the App Store in 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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