The App Timeline feature is designed to give you a holistic view of your app updates alongside those of your competitors. This powerful tool is crucial for maintaining pace with the app market trends and understanding the changes your competitors make with each update.
How Does the App Timeline Work?
Access the App Timeline via Overview -> App Timeline.
Here, you will be presented with a Timeline View, now enhanced with capabilities to track ASO updates, creative changes, and in-app events, providing deeper insights into app visibility and user engagement.
Timeline View
In the Timeline view, you'll get a chart with every selected competitor listed on the y-axis (vertical) and dates listed on the x-axis (horizontal). Updates are indicated this way:
Metadata updates (App Description, App Name, Release Notes, etc.) are marked with green dots. 🟢
The Creative updates (Icons, Screenshots, and Videos) are highlighted by light-green circle 🎾 - Track creative changes to understand their impact on user engagement.
In-app events are integrated, showing their impact on app visibility and user engagement, highlighted with a light purple dot 🟣 - You can gain insights into their impact on your app's visibility, and how they compare to your competitors' strategies.
If you click on any green Metadata Update bubble, you will get a full breakdown of the changes that were made on that day. Use the Show Changes toggle to get a better overview of the changes that were made.
Select competitors and a date range for a detailed comparison. You can select up to 9 competitors at a time.
You also have the Country Filter, to focus your analysis on specific markets or get an overview of global changes.
Promotional Content
It includes special offers, events, and major updates within Android apps.
These features are designed to attract users by offering new content/special deals, and encouraging them to open or reinstall apps. Regularly updating apps with fresh content is a good way to show Google Play that an app is actively improving, which can help increase its visibility and might even double the number of new users.
From June 21st, 2024, App Radar allows you to view the historical Promotional Content for their apps and their competitors. This information is displayed in a list view. Each line means a single instance of Promotional Content.
When you click on a Promotional Content marker, a preview of all currently ongoing Promotional pages will be shown below the Timeline.
You can click on each of them to see a more detailed breakdown including images or videos, the type of event, a tagline, and full descriptions, along with the start and end dates. The data is available for All Countries, All Tracked Countries (shown by default), or for specific country views.
This feature is specific to the Google Play Store, therefore it only displays Promotional Content for Google Play apps on the App Timeline.
While App Radar displays this promotional information, the setup of Promotional Content is managed through the Google Play Console. App Radar does not handle the setup process for these events.
Whether it's tweaking metadata, updating creatives or running in-app events, the App Timeline gives you a complete overview of your and your competitors' ASO strategies.
Note: Advanced tracking features such as Promotional Content, Creatives, Country Filter and In-App Events analysis are available exclusively on paid plans, offering a detailed analysis for a competitive edge in your ASO efforts.