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Why it’s so hard to get your new app found

The launch post went up, friends downloaded the app, and then the numbers settled into a trickle. That happens to most new apps, good ones included, because every place people find apps favours apps that already have downloads, ratings and mentions.

· Aiden Shihadeh · 4 min read

There are more than two million apps on the App Store

Apple’s count for 2025 is 2,172,472 apps, and it reviewed more than nine million submissions that year. [1] Whatever your app does, others say they do it too, and many of them have been there for years. A good app still has to be found among them.

Most App Store downloads start with a search. Apple says 70% of App Store visitors use search to find apps, and almost 65% of downloads happen directly after a search. [2]

Apple ranks those results on text relevance (matches for your title, subtitle, keywords and primary category) and on user behaviour, meaning downloads, ratings and reviews. [3] A new app can get the text right on day one. The behaviour has to be earned, and it’s hard to earn without being found first, so few downloads lead to low rankings and low rankings lead to few downloads.

Google favours sites with links and a history

Your website is new, few other sites link to it, and nobody searches for your app’s name yet. The pages that rank for “best app for…” searches tend to be review sites, lists and forum threads that have built up links and readers over years. Your own site can rank for your app’s name fairly quickly. Ranking for what people search before they’ve heard of you takes much longer.

AI answers draw on pages that already exist

People also ask ChatGPT or Gemini to recommend apps, and those answers draw on the same pages. In AppTweak’s study of more than 125,000 ChatGPT responses in the US, from May 2026, App Store listings made up 37.6% of the citations behind app recommendations and Google Play listings 9.6%. The open web, meaning your site, reviews and articles, made up 27%. [4]

The other 22.6% cited no source, so the model answered from what it already knew. [4] Models learn from text written before they were trained, so an app launched last month usually isn’t in that knowledge. A new app gets into those answers through pages the assistant can read now: your listing, your site, and what other people write about you.

Why working on one at a time feels slow

The store, Google and AI answers all reward evidence that people already use and like an app. A new app has a little of it, spread across all three, which is why improving one of them alone can seem to change nothing. It’s also why we treat ASO, SEO and GEO as one problem (more on that in our first post).

What to do in your first months

Early effort goes furthest where it counts in all three places.

  • Write your subtitle and the first lines of your description for a person. Say who the app is for and what it does better than the alternatives. Shoppers read that line, and an AI answer can quote it.
  • Target searches you can realistically win. Broad words like “budget” or “fitness” go to apps with years of downloads, while narrower phrases that match exactly what your app does give a new app a chance to show up.
  • Ask for a rating once someone has had a good experience in the app, and leave it out of the first launch. Apple says ratings and reviews can influence how your app ranks in search. [3]
  • Find the “best apps for…” articles and the Reddit or forum threads where people ask for an app like yours, and take part where it’s honest and welcome.
  • Give the app one clear page on your website, link it from your listing, and check that the site doesn’t block the crawlers AI assistants use.
  • Ask ChatGPT and Gemini the questions your users would ask, and write down which apps get named and which pages get cited. Those pages are where you want to appear.

The first months are slow for most apps. In our view the way through is to keep adding ratings, mentions and clearer listing copy in all three places at the same time.

Sources

  1. Apple, 2025 App Store Transparency Report.
  2. Apple Ads, Apple Ads on the App Store. Figures: App Store, worldwide, 2022.
  3. Apple, Search, App Store, Apple Developer.
  4. Pierre-Antoine Roy, Which sources do AI search engines cite when recommending apps, AppTweak, 30 September 2026. Data: more than 125,000 ChatGPT responses, US, May 2026.

Sources checked .