Competitors Hub
Competitors Hub
The Competitors hub lives inside the ASO section and gives you a set of tools for understanding the apps competing with
yours. Everything in this hub is anchored to the apps you follow — follow at least one competitor to unlock the full
feature set.
Setting up: follow your competitors
Go to ASO → Competitors → Manage (or click Manage Competitors in the hub header). Use the search and filter controls to
find the apps you want to track, then click Follow on each one. You can follow as many apps as you like. Following is
private and does not notify the other developer.
Once you follow an app, all Competitors hub tabs populate with data for that cohort.
Hub navigation
The Competitors hub has five sections accessible from the sidebar under ASO → Competitors:
| Section | What it shows | | --- | --- | | Activity | Recent reviews, updates, and ranking changes from followed apps |
| Ad Presence | Which apps are advertising on your tracked keywords and categories | | Keyword Gaps | Keywords where
competitors rank or advertise but you don't | | Review Insights | AI-analysed pain points and feature opportunities from
competitor reviews | | Manage | Follow and unfollow competitor apps |
Activity
The Activity feed shows what followed competitors have been doing in a selected date range. Three sub-tabs:
Reviews — new reviews left on competitor apps, with rating, excerpt, author, and date. Filter by date range to see
recent sentiment shifts.
Updates — app listing changes and changelog entries from competitor apps.
Rankings — category rank changes for followed apps. An upward arrow means they improved; downward means they dropped.
The summary cards at the top show total counts across all three categories for the period.
Ad Presence
The Ad Presence page shows which apps are running sponsored ads on the keywords and categories you track.
Keyword Advertisers — a ranked table of apps running ads on your tracked keywords in the last 30 days. Columns show: app
name, keyword count, average sponsored position. Click a row to drill into which specific keywords that advertiser is
bidding on, alongside your own organic rank for each keyword.
Category Advertisers — the same, but for your tracked categories.
Advertising Activity — a breakdown by followed competitor showing which keywords and categories each of your followed
apps is advertising on.
The Keyword Advertisers and Category Advertisers tables include a count and average position. For each advertiser,
clicking through shows: their sponsored keywords, their ad rank per keyword, and your organic rank on those same
keywords. You can track any keyword directly from this drilldown or add it to a goal.
Keyword Gaps
Keyword Gaps finds keywords where competitors have presence but you don't — either organically or through ads. Three
tabs:
Relevant (default)
Keywords semantically similar to the ones already driving your traffic, where at least one competitor ranks but you
don't. These are the highest-signal opportunities because they're proven to work in your space and map to terms your
existing traffic understands.
Powered by BigQuery: requires your GA4 connection to determine which keywords are currently driving your sessions.
Competitor Gaps (organic)
Keywords where one or more followed competitors rank in the top 20 organically, but you rank below position 20 or don't
appear at all. Sorted by opportunity score (0–100), which weighs: competitor rank strength, number of competitors
ranking, and how far below them you are.
Ads Gaps
Keywords where followed competitors are running ads (last 30 days) but you are not. High opportunity means you don't
rank organically on those terms either — ads are the competitor's only foothold, which is the clearest signal that the
keyword is contested.
All three tabs support CSV export (full export, not limited to current page) and pagination. You can track any keyword
or add it to a goal from the table.
Review Insights
Review Insights uses AI to analyse the reviews of your followed competitors (and similar apps) and extract patterns that
are hard to spot by reading reviews manually.
Running an analysis
Click Analyse New Reviews to trigger a fresh analysis job. The page shows real-time progress via a progress bar.
Analysis typically takes 30–120 seconds depending on the number of reviews in the cohort.
Results are cached. Click Analyse again to refresh with new reviews collected since the last run.
Cohort selection
Switch between Tracked Competitors (the apps you explicitly follow) and Similar Apps (apps Ranksy identifies as
operating in the same space as yours, whether or not you follow them). The insights cards update to reflect the selected
cohort.
What the results show
Summary stats — total reviews analysed, apps analysed, pain points found, feature opportunities identified.
Sentiment Distribution — breakdown of positive, mixed, neutral, and negative reviews across the cohort.
Apps Analysed — which specific apps contributed to this analysis (with review counts).
Pain Points — recurring complaint categories extracted from negative and mixed reviews. Each category shows the
frequency (count and percentage) and links to sample reviews.
Feature Opportunities — features that multiple merchants mention wanting but competitor apps don't yet offer. Each
opportunity lists the number of requests and sample review excerpts.
Top Complaints — the most frequently mentioned complaint topics, ranked by count.
Review Samples — a curated selection of analysed reviews showing the AI-extracted key topics, missing features, and
sentiment for each.
Manage
The Manage page is a searchable, filterable browser of all apps in the Ranksy database. Use it to find and follow
competitors. Filters available: category, rating range, review count range, Built for Shopify badge. Sort by rating,
review count, or recently updated.
Clicking a row navigates to that app's public profile page.
FAQ
Q: How many competitors can I follow? A: There is no hard limit on the number of apps you can follow.
Q: Do competitors know I'm following them? A: No. Following is private.
Q: The Keyword Gaps tab shows no data. Why? A: You need to follow at least one competitor first. Go to Manage and follow
some apps. Organic Gaps also requires those competitors to have scraped keyword ranking data in Ranksy's database, which
happens over time as rankings are tracked.
Q: Review Insights shows zero reviews. Why? A: Click Analyse New Reviews to trigger the initial analysis job. If your
followed apps have no reviews in Ranksy's database yet, switch to the Similar Apps cohort which draws on a broader set.
Q: The Ad Presence tab shows no advertisers. Why? A: Ad presence data comes from Ranksy's daily keyword rank scraping,
which records sponsored positions when they appear. If your tracked keywords are not frequently advertised on, or if
keyword tracking was set up recently, this can be empty. Check back after a few days of scraping.
Next steps
- Tracked Keywords (ASO) — see your organic rank on the keywords your competitors are bidding on
- App Store Ads — cross-reference with your own ad performance data
- Follow an App — difference between following and adding to My Apps