Today we released our consumer search report for August. The month proved to be a challenging one for the eastern U.S. as residents struggled with Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Emily and the Virginia earthquake. At Chomp we could see that mobile phones were an important tool as people struggled to deal with these disasters. Search traffic for hurricane apps spiked more than 2000% above trend during Hurricane Irene’s formation, warning, and landfall. A 250% spike was seen during the formation of Tropical Storm Emily. Search traffic for earthquake apps was up 2000% immediately after the 5.8 magnitude event in Virginia.
Our thoughts are with those that suffered during the storms and earthquake, as they work to rebuild their lives and communities. Their courage is very inspiring to everyone here at Chomp and we wish them well.
While natural disaster related apps were of the most interest to search users, other trends emerged during the month:
- Once again Games were a top search query. On Android, game queries increased from 21.7% to 25.7%, and utility queries increased from 11.5% to 15.8%. Queries for iOS games dropped slightly from 31.7% to 27.7%, while its share was distributed among several smaller categories.
- After three consecutive months of increasing paid app downloads we saw a decrease in August. Paid app downloads decreased by 4% on Android, this decrease was seen across lower and premium price points. iOS saw an increase in paid app downloads of 1%. The $0.99 price point saw a small drop in share, which was redistributed to higher price points.
- The top Android search queries were “free,” “games,” “entertainment,” “music” and “utilities,” The top five Android app searches were for Angry Birds Rio, Sound Hound, Angry Birds, IMDB Movies & TV, and Advanced Task Killer. The top iOS queries were for “games,” “entertainment,” “puzzle games,” “adventure games” and “lifestyle.” The top iOS app searches were for Dropbox, Cut The Rope, Plants vs. Zombies, Tap Pet Hotel, and Instagram.
Ben Keighran
CEO & Co-Founder
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