App Store and Google Play regularly update their ranking algorithms — the systems that decide which apps appear at the top of keyword search results. These updates can impact your app’s visibility and keyword rankings, even if nothing changed in your metadata or performance.

AppTweak's Algorithm Change Detector — located within Store Explorer — helps you stay on top of these updates. It identifies when a ranking algorithm has likely changed and highlights days with unusual keyword ranking movements in a given store and country.

The Algorithm Change Detector automatically analyzes thousands of keyword rankings every day across countries and stores (iOS and Android).

When it detects significant movements that go beyond normal daily fluctuations, it flags that day as an Algorithm Change.

In short, it helps you:

Select the store, country, and date range you want to investigate.

Each point on the chart represents the Anomaly Score for that day. This score measures how unusual keyword ranking movements are compared to typical behavior in that market. Here's how to interpret it:

When the red line crosses the threshold, that day is detected as an algorithm change. The higher the spike, the larger the update made by Apple or Google — meaning more keyword rankings affected.

A negative score simply means rankings moved less than usual. This reflects a calm, stable period — not a sign of an update. Algorithm changes never appear as negative scores.

At the top of this view, you’ll see the magnitude and date of the most recent algorithm change detected within your selected date range.

When you detect an algorithm change in a specific country, you can switch to the

Worldwide View to instantly see which other countries were affected by the update.

This view helps you understand how broadly an algorithm update impacted different markets. Each country is colored based on its highest Anomaly Score over the selected date range, allowing you to quickly identify which regions experienced the strongest ranking movements across the 50 countries we monitor.

On the right, the table lists the top affected countries within your selected timeframe. By hovering over any value in the table—or over any country on the map—you’ll see the exact date and Anomaly Score that represents the peak movement for that country during the selected period.

If you're on a Grow or Enterprise plan, click Set up notifications, to configure alerts in the Smart Insights dashboard. Receive notifications via email or Slack whenever an algorithm change is detected in the markets you follow, so you can be the first to know when sudden ranking shifts happen.

We're sometimes asked whether an algorithm change impacted some categories or keyword types more than others—for example:

We explored these breakdowns historically, but did not find consistent or statistically meaningful differences across past algorithm changes. In other words, when AppTweak detects an algorithm change, the impact typically shows up as a broad market-wide shift rather than a reliably stronger effect on one category or keyword segment over another.

The Algorithm Change Detector helps you confirm whether there was a market-level update in a given store and country.

To understand how that day affected your app specifically, use Keyword Movement Detector (available on the Enterprise plan). This feature shows exactly which keywords your app gained or lost rankings on, and by how much—helping you distinguish between general market turbulence and app-specific ranking changes.

The Algorithm Change Detector is available for: