11. Special datasets

App store rankings (APPS)

APPS tracks where a listed company's apps rank on public app-store charts by country and chart, with ratings and an overall attention score.

  • 4 min
  • 3 questions
  • Lesson 5 of 8

Why you would care

Are this company's apps gaining or losing attention? For companies whose products are apps (social media, games, streaming, food delivery, finance), store rankings move daily and often hint at a launch's success or a product's decline before revenue shows it. It is another alternative-data signal: noisy, fast, and useful when read carefully.

The idea from scratch

App stores publish top charts per country: top free, top paid, top grossing and by category. A rank is a position in a chart (1 is the top). Rankings reflect recent downloads and engagement as each store measures them; the stores do not publish the formula.

What to read:

Rank
Position in a chart for a country and category
Rank velocity
How fast the rank is moving
Rating / ratings count
The average star rating and how many people rated
Rating drift
Whether the average rating is rising or falling
Attention score
A summary of a company's ranks across apps and countries

Apps are mapped to their listed parent (WhatsApp to Meta), so one company's apps can be followed together.

  1. Store top charts by country
  2. Rank, rating, ratings count
  3. Mapped to listed parent
  4. Attention score and changes
  5. Signal: launch traction or decline

See it in Gloom

Gloom screenshot: APPS META, Table tab, free preview
APPS META, Table tab, free preview: the company's apps ranked in store charts by country with rating and number of ratings, and an attention score. Captured 2026-10-06.

open itAPPS for the board, APPS META for one company (non-US: APPS 0700:HKEX). Tabs: Table, Chart, Markets, Peers, Evidence. Filters: Country, Chart.

  1. Attention score 65.1 / 100, Apps 13 15 countries: the company's overall store presence.
  2. Muse from Meta US Free 1 4.86 163,432: an app at number 1 on the US free chart.
  3. WhatsApp Messenger AF Free 3: rank 3 in another country's chart.
  4. Upgrade for all observations: the free preview shows three rows.
  5. Markets compares countries; Peers compares listed parents; Evidence shows the source capture.

Practice and recap

Try it3 tasks
  1. Which app ranks highest in the screenshot? (Muse from Meta, number 1 in the US free chart.)
  2. Why can't rank be converted into revenue? (Ranks are positions; stores do not publish downloads or spending behind them.)
  3. A company's main app drops from rank 5 to 40 across ten countries in a month. What would you check next? (Ratings drift, competitors' ranks, news, and whether the chart category changed.)
Common mistakes4 mistakes
  • Treating rank as downloads.
  • Comparing ranks across countries of very different size.
  • Ignoring that free and grossing charts measure different things.
  • Over-reading one day's move.
Check yourself3 questions
  1. What is a top chart rank?
  2. What is rating drift?
  3. Why map apps to a listed parent?
Answers
  1. An app's position in a store's chart for one country and category.
  2. A change in an app's average star rating over time.
  3. To follow all apps of one public company together.
Words in this lesson5 words
top chart
A store's ranking of apps for a country and category.
rank velocity
How fast an app's rank changes.
rating drift
A change in the average rating over time.
listed parent
The public company that owns an app.
attention score
A summary of a company's app ranks.

Educational material about reading market data, not investment advice.