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Is there a market for Chrome Web Store rank tracking software?

Do you know of any growth hackers or companies focused on bringing Chrome Extensions higher in rankings and increase their visibility in Chrome Web Store?

I'm trying to validate whether or not the demand for such a tracking tool exists. Suppose you want to optimize a Chrome Extension to show up higher in the search results when searching for its keywords in the Web Store, and while you do that, you'd like to track progress (i.e position or rank) of the extension in search results (or categories) over time, see progress reports, etc.

I couldn't find any existing software that does that, which is not exactly an encouraging fact.

  1. 1

    Stumbled across the same software-need. I built a rank monitoring service that does exactly this: https://bex.wolf.gdn

    You can add extensions, and for each extension you can add monitoring jobs that track the rank for the provided search terms every day. This way, you can monitor your current rankings for the keywords you are optimizing and see how you are doing.

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    What do you mean? Like chrome webstore optimization services? I think a large part comes down to a good product and well-writen explanation of the functionality. Also, consistent imagery helps.

    1. 2

      I'm talking about position tracking.

      Say you want to grow an extension whose functionality is that closes all your opened tabs after 24 hours. You want to optimize your extension to be the first one when users type in "tabs closer" in Chrome Web Store.

      While you do the optimizations, you'd like to track its position when searching for that term. And monitor when it goes up or down. Like SEO software, but for Chrome Web Store.

  3. 1

    Certainly companies will pay you if you can build software to reliably bring in more traffic from the Chrome Web Store in order to make them more money.
    They already tell you how to optimise your listing here though: https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/faq#faq-gen-24. Most of it just seems to be following the instructions plus maybe gaming the human curation aspect of being featured, etc. I'm sceptical of how much value you could actually add with software here. Maybe if you can more explicitly identify how the patterns of installs vs uninstalls, reviews, etc. affect your ranking?

  4. 1

    I would use this for Chrome and FireFox stores. How would you create this? (i.e. what data would you use?).

    Can you answer this question: How come Grammarly, Honey, LastPass etc. are always under the "Recently Updated" space on the landing page here? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions

    Do they just push an update every minute?

    1. 2

      Probably, yes. It's a common strategy on various app stores.

      It may not be entirely on purpose, some companies will be pushing multiple builds per day anyway. But it's also a known strategy to rank in app stores. And of course it's not just 'who updated last', a popular app recently updated will beat out an unknown with a more recent update.

    2. 1

      As Freeboots mentioned, this is a standard strategy with mobile apps and the same probably goes with extensions.

      Stores rune similarly so mostly good relationship with curator helps (deeply undervalued and can be done), following good examples and analyzing top apps on the store (especially the ones you think shouldn't be there) on what they are doing it brings them so high.

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