Review: Sensor Tower for app research and tracking

If you are interested in building an app or have built an app and want to track how it is doing for search, etc. Sensor Tower is a good tool.

Currently I’m tracking my game BouncyKat. The good news is I learned a lot about search, especially from their daily lessons (sign up here to get the email). The bad news is my search terms stunk.

So, after making a few key changes to my game to iTunes so that I could change my keywords and description. I’m on a trial, so if I get the ability to track more keywords in the future I’ll amend this review, so I can only track and do limited research. But the research that is available is rich and actionable.

For example, I can see the difficulty to rank, by device and where I rank for those terms. Right now I stink but I’m working on it. Not only am I working on it but the screenshot below aren’t even good search terms to track. I’ll update those once iTunes approves my update.

Sensor Tower also allows for keyword research, suggestions and spy on keywords from other apps. The spy tool is great because you might find that there is an app that doesn’t have a ton of reviews and has been out for a while but ranks in the top 10. Why? I ask that all the time and Sensor Tower helps me diagnose with an easy to use interface.

Ignore my horrible ranking for now because Sensor Tower has allowed me to get smarter about keywords (if you need to update your keywords you can only do it once you update your app in iTunes otherwise they are locked).

Below you can see an example of keyword research dashboard:

Below are the features you get when you use Sensor Tower:

The one issue that I’ve run into, frankly, is the cost. I’m trying to move game app development beyond a hobby so $79 a month is a steep price to pay for tracking a hobby. If I were a professional or agency and my apps were already making money this would be a bargain. Below is the breakdown in costs.