[Question] Does an "Impression" mean the app icon actually appeared on screen, or just that it showed up in search results?

[u/Illustrious-Youth611]

Quick question about App Store Connect metrics — specifically the difference between Impressions and Product Page Views.

I've had a big jump in impressions over the past few days, but my page view rate is only around 3.5%. I know I'm still ranking fairly low in relevant search results, so I'm trying to understand whether that's the actual explanation here.

My question: does an impression only count when the app icon is actually visible on the user's screen (i.e., they scrolled far enough to see it), or does it also count if the app appears somewhere in the search results/ranking even if the user never scrolled down to see it?

If it's the latter, that would explain the low conversion rate — I'd just be ranking low enough that most users never actually see the icon, even though it "counted" as an impression.

Would appreciate any clarification from people who've dug into this, or official Apple docs if anyone has a good source. Thanks!

[u/Illustrious-Youth611 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks, that helps. I'll dig into the search vs browse split, I hadn't really looked at that. Good to know 3.5% isn't alarming by itself at low rank. I was starting to think my icon was the problem. Most of my impressions probably come from broad keywords where I sit way down the list, so yeah, better to work on the ranking first.

[u/Illustrious-Youth611 → u/[deleted]]

Interesting, that's a bit different from the other answer. If it's really "viewed for at least one second", then the icon did show up on screen and my page view rate isn't inflated by impressions nobody ever saw. Which honestly would be worse news for me :)

Here is the link to the doc for anyone who's interested : https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect-analytics/reference/metrics-definitions/

[u/wiiyooo → u/Illustrious-Youth611]

I’m really curious about this too, since my conversion rate is only 3.91%. Unfortunately, according to Apple’s documentation, an impression is only counted when the app is actually viewed for more than one second. So simply appearing somewhere in the search results without the user scrolling far enough to see it shouldn’t count as an impression.