ASO, monetization, subscriptions, pricing, analytics, and experiments.
Article
Apple added a product page header, 3:2 search card, custom pages, PPO, and in-app events. I opened them in Connect. The first screenshot is no longer the whole ad.
3 min readGrowth
Article
October is ADHD Awareness Month. BrainHD went live 1 October 2026 on the first try, within two days. I am promoting the planner I shipped — not a medical explainer.
1 min readGrowth
Article
I published BrainHD on the US storefront URL. Hangar, Sera, and Monetra I still link as apps.apple.com/pk. The product is the same binary. The link is which store I open when I check the page.
1 min readGrowth
Article
BrainHD Plus unlocks the full app with a 7-day free trial, then monthly or yearly. Prices show in the app. I put the trial on the listing before the first submission.
1 min readGrowth
Article
After Hangar and Monetra shipped I still have to write What's New. Users do not want commit messages. I write the one thing that changed in the listing.
1 min readGrowth
Article
Hangar's subtitle has to say what the tap does. Stuffing keywords into the subtitle is how a listing looks spammy and still fails to explain the webhook.
1 min readGrowth
Article
I have set up Stripe and Polar for revenue. Like App Store Connect, the dashboard and the bank details decide whether the code can charge anyone. I look at the account before I debug the webhook.
1 min readGrowth
Article
Apple's iOS 27 Bundles and Suites need StoreKit 2. If products do not load today, a Bundle will not load either. I check the current paywall before I plan a Suite.
1 min readGrowth
Article
Ninety-five percent Direct in GA4 was me, chat apps, and LinkedIn stripping referrers. I share article URLs with utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign.
1 min readGrowth
Build Log
App Store Connect on September 27: Sera had 1.38k impressions, 121 product page views, 16 first-time downloads, 1.83% conversion, $3 proceeds, and one in-app purchase. I finally have numbers I will write down.
1 min readGrowth
Article
Sera's product is a Glow Score and a routine that changes. If the first screenshot does not show that, the listing is a skincare generic. I treat the frame like Hangar's first screenshot.
1 min readGrowth
Article
This site scores related posts by tags, category, and type. I still put explicit links in the body to the eight-rejections hub, 2.1, and 3.1.2. Google needs the cluster, not a pile of orphans.
1 min readGrowth
Build Log
App Store Connect on October 1: Monetra had 9.59k impressions, 357 product page views, 54 first-time downloads, $14 proceeds, two in-app purchases, and $2 monthly recurring revenue. The funnel barely moved. The new row was one paid plan.
2 min readGrowth
Article
Monetra tracks spending, sales, inventory, and profit. I built it as a business tool. The listing has to say that or impressions stay impressions.
1 min readGrowth
Article
Before Hangar shipped I typed candidate keywords into the App Store. Vercel was one I wanted. #21 did not mean those searches had demand.
1 min readGrowth
Article
Hangar ranked #21 for Vercel and still needed someone to notice the listing. The first screenshot is the ad. Ranking only bought a slot.
1 min readGrowth
Build Log
App Store Connect on October 1: Hangar had 5.08k impressions, 189 product page views, 19 first-time downloads, and a 0.5% conversion rate. Impressions climbed. Downloads did not. Sales still not enough data.
2 min readGrowth
Article
Hangar fires deploys from a phone. The category is Developer Tools. A vague utility category would have attracted the wrong searcher — the same way a Vercel rank attracted the wrong hope.
1 min readGrowth
Article
Filling Hangar's keyword field made Apple willing to show it. It did not mean people search those words or download from result 21. I stopped reading the field as a traffic plan.
1 min readGrowth
Article
E-E-A-T is not a ranking factor. Google says so. What its systems look for are signals of experience, expertise, authority, and above all trust, and the practical test is three questions: who made this, how, and why. Running this site's one editorial rule through those questions.
3 min readGrowth
Article
In June Google published a page on third-party SEO tools, services, and advice. The key sentences: tools do not have Google's internal ranking data, they cannot guarantee performance, and Google does not evaluate AEO or GEO services. How I read a tool score now, and the one source Google tells you to trust.
3 min readGrowth
Article
Since August 30, a site reputation manual action changes results for searchers outside the EEA and does nothing for searchers inside it. Google also wrote down the four things it looks at in third-party content. Here is what changed and why a one-author site should still read the list.
3 min readGrowth
Article
Apple is adding subscription Bundles and Suites later in 2026 and turning on multiseat purchasing by default in App Store Connect. What each one is, the StoreKit 2 requirement, the limits, and the one setting to check now.
4 min readGrowth
Article
Google generates the title you see in results from the title element, the visible headline, headings, og:title, and even other sites' anchor text. This site sends a separate seoTitle for the title element and shows the headline on the page. Here is why, when Google rewrites titles, and the one way that setup can go wrong.
3 min readGrowth
Article
March, June, and August 2026 each had a spam update, the longest under three days. The policies behind them are public. Scaled content abuse, expired domains, site reputation, and the new back button rule, read against a site that just published five posts in a day.
3 min readGrowth
Article
On September 16 Google lowered the Search profile threshold to 10,000 followers and published a guide to putting a follow badge on your own site. What a Search profile is, what following does to Discover, the exact HTML, and the brand rules. Also why I do not have one yet.
3 min readGrowth
Article
Google-Extended does not affect Search ranking. It controls Gemini training. Googlebot feeds Search, Discover, and AI Overviews.
3 min readGrowth
Article
Discover needs no special markup, but wants a 1200px image and max-image-preview:large. Why my SVG covers fall short, and what cover alt text is for.
4 min readGrowth
Article
Google's own guide says there is no schema, file, or tag that gets you into AI Overviews or AI Mode. FAQ rich results are gone too. Here is what I kept, what I did not add, and the one robots rule I am rethinking.
4 min readGrowth
Article
Google's crawl budget guide names the sites it applies to: a million-plus pages changing weekly, ten thousand-plus changing daily, or a large pile of URLs stuck at Discovered, currently not indexed. This site has twenty-eight URLs. What crawl budget is, what wastes it, and what everyone else should look at instead.
3 min readGrowth
Article
The March and May 2026 core updates each took about twelve days. Google's own guidance on what to do afterward is more specific than most people think: wait a week, compare positions, treat a move from 2 to 4 differently from 4 to 29, and delete as a last resort. Plus the helpful content system officially moving to the retired list.
3 min readGrowth
Build Log
In two months on the App Store, Monetra had 9k+ impressions and 60 organic downloads. No ads. Here is what those two numbers actually tell me.
2 min readGrowth
Build Log
Hangar reached #21 for “Vercel” on the App Store and I assumed the ASO was working. App Store Connect disagreed — here’s what I got wrong about ranking.
3 min readGrowth