Growth in Organic Traffic and Indexation for an AI App

Product: Mobile app in the AI Art and Design category

Period: March 2026

Platforms: App Store and Google Play

A mobile AI app in the visual content category came to us for ASO support. Due to NDA restrictions, we do not disclose the product name, interface, or creative assets, but we can share our ASO approach, the markets we worked on, and the results we achieved.

The project focused on growing organic traffic in the App Store, expanding keyword indexation across priority countries, validating visual hypotheses, and launching the first structured ASO iterations in Google Play.

During the reporting period, the App Store showed strong worldwide organic growth, while Google Play showed the first signs of recovery in several countries

At the start of the project, we had several objectives.

We needed to strengthen organic growth in the App Store, expand indexation across key locales, validate visual hypotheses, reduce the risk of performance declines after metadata and creative updates, and build a foundation for further growth in Google Play.

We rebuilt the metadata workflow by locale

We analyzed organic traffic and indexation across countries, updated metadata, and tracked the store’s response to each iteration. Our main focus was on the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands.

In the US, the first iteration led to strong indexation growth, while the next metadata version reduced coverage. This allowed us to quickly identify an ineffective hypothesis and adjust the strategy.

After the first iterations, we saw positive indexation movement across several locales. In one key market, the app started ranking for more than 150 search queries.

In another market, more than 100 new keywords were added to the index. In one more locale, after reverting to the previous metadata version, we restored about 80 queries in the index.

Both stores ran tests of visual assets and store listing design. Some experiments had to be paused because of parallel asset changes, but the tests helped us understand which visual solutions were more stable and how they affected conversion.

In the App Store, we also launched additional growth levers in parallel. They helped strengthen the app’s presence in the store, expand visibility, and create more touchpoints with the audience.

These were the first ASO iterations in Google Play. We worked on metadata, search visibility, and creative assets to gradually increase relevance and prepare the platform for further growth.

Despite the overall decline in worldwide traffic, the first positive search signals had already started to appear in several countries.

During the reporting period, worldwide organic impressions in the App Store increased more than 160-fold, downloads grew by around 50%, and first-time downloads rose by around 60%. This means the app managed to sharply increase visibility and convert part of that growth into new installs.

In Google Play, the overall worldwide trend remained moderate, but several countries showed the first signs of recovery in search traffic. At this early stage, this was a strong signal that the chosen direction was working and could be scaled further.

This project clearly showed how strongly ASO depends not only on metadata, but also on the quality and sequencing of visual updates. After some of the updates, performance weakened in several key markets.

In addition, the global conversion rate dropped from about 4.8 to 1.6 after icon and screenshot changes were introduced without prior validation through testing.

In Google Play, performance was also affected by a decline in paid traffic volumes. Worldwide traffic across key channels went down, but local iterations had already started to show the first positive signals, which gave the project a stronger foundation for future growth.

This case shows that even early ASO iterations can deliver noticeable growth in organic traffic and indexation across several countries. It also shows that changes to metadata, icons, and screenshots should not be rolled out without careful validation.

The best results come from a systematic process in which every hypothesis goes through testing, analysis, and only then scaling. That is exactly the approach that helped strengthen organic growth in the App Store and lay the groundwork for further growth in Google Play.