Ratings, reviews and localization

Ratings are the most underrated part of ASO, because they work in two places at once: ranking and conversion.

Apple states that ratings and reviews appear both on the product page and in search results and can influence how your app ranks in App Store search. Google says the same in its own words: apps are ranked on a combination of ratings, reviews, downloads and other factors.

So an app rated 3.4 cannot compete with one rated 4.6 on the same keywords — neither in being seen nor in being tapped.

Apple also notes that the summary rating is specific to each territory and can be reset when you release a new version — but advises using this sparingly, since having very few ratings also puts people off. Resetting the rating does not delete written reviews.

How to raise the rating — legitimately.

Apple's documentation gives a concrete mechanism: the SKStoreReviewController API shows the standard rating prompt and can be called at most three times in a 365-day period. Apple's advice is this: place the request at a moment when the user is likely to feel satisfaction — after they complete an action, level or task — and do not interrupt what they are doing.

Those two sentences contain the whole strategy:

• The wrong moment: asking the first time the app opens. The person has received nothing yet, so they either dismiss it or leave a low score
• The right moment: right after the first set of notes is ready, immediately after the first successful outcome

You have three chances — do not spend them on day one.

Replying to reviews is a separate tool. Apple describes it as building rapport with users; Google lists responding to users and addressing issues among its discoverability tips. The practical takeaway: reply to every one- and two-star review. The reply is not for that person — it is for the next hundred people who read the page.

Localization — the cheapest visibility gain.

Apple recommends localizing your product page into the languages the App Store supports, noting it makes the app easier to understand for people in different regions. Google says something more concrete: on Play, automatic machine translations are provided, but using a professional translation for the description can lead to better search results and discoverability.

There are two separate benefits here and they should not be conflated:

• The conversion benefit — people download more when they read in their own language
• The visibility benefit — every new language opens a new keyword space for you. Ranking for "mühazirə" in Azerbaijani is not the same as ranking for "lecture" in English, and the competition is completely different

For a small app the second benefit is the bigger one. Being visible in global English competition is hard; in Azerbaijani, Turkish or Russian the same topic is often wide open.