| --- |
| license: cc-by-4.0 |
| pretty_name: "Search vs. Store: AI App Search Demand vs App Store Rank vs Web Traffic (US, 2026)" |
| tags: |
| - ai-apps |
| - google-trends |
| - app-store |
| - similarweb |
| - search-demand |
| configs: |
| - config_name: default |
| data_files: |
| - split: snapshot_2026_07_26 |
| path: data/search-vs-store-ai-apps-2026-07-26.csv |
| - split: snapshot_2026_07_01 |
| path: data/search-vs-store-ai-apps-2026-07-01.csv |
| --- |
| |
| # Search vs. Store — AI app search demand vs App Store rank vs web traffic (US, 2026) |
|
|
| One row per major AI app joining **three independent popularity signals**. Two |
| cross-sectional US snapshots (**2026-07-01** and **2026-07-26**), 40 curated AI apps each. |
| Aggregate/derived only — no raw records, no PII. License: **CC BY 4.0**. |
|
|
| - Study + methodology: <https://crawlora.net/blog/search-vs-store-2026?utm_source=huggingface&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=search-vs-store> |
| - Dataset page: <https://crawlora.net/datasets/search-vs-store?utm_source=huggingface&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=search-vs-store> |
| - Living index (updated panel + lead/lag test): <https://crawlora.net/search-vs-store?utm_source=huggingface&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=search-vs-store> |
| - Source repository: <https://github.com/Crawlora-org/search-vs-store-data> |
|
|
| ## Why it's interesting |
|
|
| Rank the 40 apps by web visits and you get roughly the **search** order (ChatGPT, Gemini, |
| Canva, Claude, DeepSeek…), **not** the App Store order. Search demand and web traffic agree; |
| **the App Store rank is the outlier**, scrambled by distribution deals and platform push. |
| The dataset makes that divergence explicit in the `divergence` column. |
|
|
| ## Columns |
|
|
| - **app** — display name. |
| - **trends_term** — the exact query measured on Google Trends (hand-picked to disambiguate |
| brand names, e.g. "Claude AI", "Google Gemini"). |
| - **search_tier** — coarse Google search-demand tier: Dominant > High > Moderate > Low > |
| Minimal. Coarse on purpose: ChatGPT dwarfs the field ~30–1000x, so the sub-Minimal tail is |
| below Google Trends' resolution and is never individually ranked. |
| - **trends_interest_chatgpt100** — trailing-12-month mean Google Trends interest, |
| anchor-normalized so ChatGPT = 100. Directional, **not** precise for the small tail. |
| - **best_app_store_rank** — best current US chart position across iOS/Play, Top Free + |
| Grossing (null = off the top-100). **ios_rank** / **android_rank** — per-store best. |
| - **chart_score** — 101 - best_app_store_rank (higher = better standing; null if off-chart). |
| - **ratings_count** — combined iOS+Play ratings count (install proxy), where matched. |
| - **sw_monthly_visits** — SimilarWeb estimated monthly web visits (absolute; blank = below |
| SimilarWeb's floor). **sw_global_rank** — SimilarWeb global site rank. |
| - **divergence** — `downloads_not_search` | `search_not_downloads` | `aligned` (tier gap |
| between store standing and search demand). |
| |
| ## Files |
| |
| | File | What | |
| |---|---| |
| | `data/search-vs-store-ai-apps-2026-07-26.csv` | Snapshot 2026-07-26, one row per app | |
| | `data/search-vs-store-ai-apps-2026-07-26.json` | Same rows + metadata + the search x store tier matrix | |
| | `data/search-vs-store-ai-apps-2026-07-01.csv` | Snapshot 2026-07-01, one row per app | |
| | `data/search-vs-store-ai-apps-2026-07-01.json` | Same rows + metadata + tier matrix | |
| |
| The `.json` files are a metadata wrapper (`method`, `columns`, `tier_matrix`, `data[]`), so |
| the CSVs are the flat, directly-loadable tables. |
|
|
| ## Caveats worth reading before you cite this |
|
|
| - **Do not compute a cross-app search correlation from `trends_interest_chatgpt100`.** Google |
| Trends rescales 0-100 against the largest term in each request, and ChatGPT's volume |
| collapses the tail into noise. The tiers and the `divergence` label are robust; a |
| correlation coefficient over these values is an artifact. See the study for the full |
| writeup. |
| - **`sw_monthly_visits` / `sw_global_rank` are joined from the nearest available panel date** |
| when the daily SimilarWeb panel had no row for the snapshot date (see `similarweb_as_of` in |
| the JSON metadata) — a few days off from the rest of the row. |
| - App Store chart history behind these snapshots is only ~2-3 weeks deep upstream; these are |
| point-in-time snapshots, not a long rank history. |
|
|
| ## Citation |
|
|
| > Crawlora (2026). *Search vs. Store: AI App Search Demand vs App Store Rank vs Web Traffic |
| > (US, 2026)*. CC BY 4.0. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21987676 |
|
|
| Collected with [Crawlora](https://crawlora.net?utm_source=huggingface&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=search-vs-store). |
|
|
