Does running Apple Ads improve my organic rankings?

A common question after running Apple Ads is whether the paid activity helped your organic rankings. No tool can prove that paid ads directly caused an organic rank change, since many factors move rankings at once. What you can do is investigate the correlation: line up your paid activity and your organic movement over the same period and see whether they track together.

This article walks through a workflow using three tools to do that.

The tools you will use

Step 1: Establish your organic baseline

Start in the Organic Acquisition Dashboard to see the big picture of your organic growth around the period you ran Apple Ads.

1. Open the Organic Acquisition Dashboard in Store Analytics and select your app.
2. Set a month range that covers before, during, and after your Apple Ads activity. The range can span 2 to 12 months.
3. Review the Total and organic downloads section to see whether organic downloads rose during and after the campaign period.
4. Review the Keyword ranking section, which shows your total ranked keywords, average rank, ranking distribution, and a movement summary between your first and last selected months.

This tool tells you whether your organic footprint improved over the window in question. If it did, the next steps will help you see whether that movement aligns with the specific keywords you were bidding on.

Step 2: Line up rank movement with your campaign on specific keywords

Next, use Keyword Tracking to look at the exact keywords you targeted in Apple Ads and see how their organic rank moved over the same dates.

1. Open Keyword Tracking and make sure the keywords you targeted with Apple Ads are added to your tracked list.
2. Go to the Ranking History tab.
3. Select up to five keywords to plot, and set the date range to match your campaign window.
4. Hover over the chart to see the exact organic rank on each date, and note whether rank improved during or shortly after the paid activity.

If organic rank on your targeted keywords climbed in step with the campaign, that is a signal worth investigating further, though still a correlation rather than proof. In the Tracked Keywords table, the Apple Ads badge next to a keyword opens a view of the top apps running Apple Ads campaigns for that keyword, which is useful for seeing how competitive the paid landscape is on the terms you care about.

Review broader rank movement in ASO Report

The ASO Report shows how your organic rankings are distributed across position bands over time, either for the keywords you actively track or for your full ranked footprint. Switching between those two pools lets you distinguish a broad organic shift from movement on the specific terms you were bidding on.

1. Open the ASO Report in ASO Intelligence and select your app.
2. Choose your keyword pool. Tracked Keywords covers the terms you are actively managing, including your bid terms. All Ranked Keywords covers every term the App Store ranks your app for.
3. On Report By Ranking, set the date range to match your campaign period. The Ranking Graph shows how many keywords fall into each position band (1, 2 to 3, 4 to 10, 11 to 30, 31 to 100, 101+) over time, with your Visibility Score shown as the black line. The Ranking Bars on the right show the current snapshot for each band.
4. Use the Compare date control on the keyword table to measure the change between two specific dates.
5. Optionally, turn on App Updates to see whether a shift aligns with an app release rather than your paid activity.

Comparing the broad All Ranked Keywords view with movement on your specific bid terms helps you judge whether paid activity aligns with movement on those terms, or whether you are seeing a general organic shift across the whole footprint. Because ASO Report reflects organic rankings only, it gives you a clean read on the organic side of that comparison.

Step 3: Confirm the paid activity on those keywords

Next, use Search Result/Keyword to confirm your paid presence for the keyword during the same period, so you are comparing organic movement against actual paid activity.

1. Open Search Result/Keyword in Search Ads Intelligence and enter one of your targeted keywords.
2. Set the date range to match the window you analyzed in the previous steps.
3. Read the Total Impression Share chart to see how your paid visibility on that keyword changed over time. A rising line for your app confirms you were gaining paid impressions during the period.
4. Check the organic rank column in the apps table to cross-reference your organic position for that keyword against the paid movement.

Step 4: Separate paid and organic downloads

The dashboard gives a monthly organic trend, but the Download Report can separate paid and organic downloads at a daily grain, which is useful for isolating what Apple Ads contributed during the campaign window.

1. Open Download Report in Store Analytics. App Store Connect must be connected, and Apple Ads must be integrated to see paid and Apple Ads-attributed download data.
2. Select your app and country, and set the period to your campaign window.
3. In the Total View panel, review total, organic, paid, and Apple Ads downloads side by side.
4. Use date-range comparison to place the campaign period next to a period before it, and check whether organic downloads held or grew rather than simply being replaced by paid.

This is the clearest read on whether paid downloads came in addition to your organic downloads, or largely in place of them.

Step 5: Check whether the traffic converted

Finally, use Conversion Funnel View to see whether the extra visibility turned into downloads, so an uplift in impressions is not mistaken for an uplift in results.

1. Open Conversion Funnel View in Store Analytics and select your app, market, and date range. You can group data by day, week, or month.
2. Review the top chart and funnel for impressions, first-time downloads, and conversion rate across the campaign window.
3. Use the monthly section to compare with previous months, and the table view to pinpoint the exact day when any change began.

If impressions rose during the campaign and first-time downloads rose with them while conversion rate held, the added visibility was converting rather than just inflating impressions.

Putting it together

Read across the tools for the same keywords and the same dates. When organic downloads and ranked-keyword movement in the dashboard, organic rank gains in Keyword Tracking, those gains showing up on your bid terms rather than across your whole ranked footprint in ASO Report, rising paid impression share in Search Result/Keyword, a healthy paid-and-organic download split in the Download Report, and steady conversion in the Funnel View all point the same way over the same window, you have a well-supported case that paid and organic moved together.

That is the strongest correlation view the platform can give you. It remains an analysis of correlation, so treat sustained, repeated patterns across multiple keywords as more convincing than a single coincidental move.

Related links

• About the Organic Acquisition Dashboard
• View keyword ranking history
• About Search Result/Keyword
• About Download Report
• About Conversion Funnel View

Need more help?

If you have further questions on the process, contact your dedicated Customer Success Manager or contact the support team via live chat!