Read your own ASO report the way I would

Open the last report your agency sent. Before you read a word of it, count the pages, and then count the number of sentences that describe a change made to your store listing. In most reports I am sent, the first number is between eight and forty and the second is between zero and two. That ratio is the first thing to know about the retainer you are paying.

A report has three kinds of content. Movement: rankings up, rankings down, visibility scores, impressions. Description: what the store looked like this month, who the competitors were, what the category did. And change: a specific alteration to your title, subtitle, keyword field, screenshots or icon, on a date, with the reason. Movement and description are generated from tools. Change is work. Go through the report with three highlighters and mark each paragraph. You will have a lot of the first two colours.

Now find the one number that matters, which is almost never in the report: organic search installs, by week, for the last six months. It lives in App Store Connect under the search source, and in Play Console under the search traffic breakdown. Pull it yourself. Put the dates of every change the agency made on the same chart. If you cannot find any dates of changes, that is the finding.

Do not fire anyone today. Just notice the ratio, and notice whether the number that matters appears anywhere in the document you are paying for.

Today’s task

• Count the pages and the sentences describing a change.
• Highlight movement, description and change in three colours.
• Pull organic search installs by week from the console and plot the change dates on it.

Related: How to read an agency proposal · What ASO services really are · Why I am not an ASO agency