Why is my Shopify app’s ranking low despite a 4.8 rating and high retention? Do old uninstalls affect ranking?

Shopify App Store
1

Hi everyone,

We’re trying to understand the factors impacting our app’s Shopify App Store ranking and have noticed some confusing uninstall behaviour. We have a partner app. I’d really appreciate insights from other app developers or Shopify team members who’ve dealt with similar issues.

Here’s our situation:

  1. App Rating: 4.8
  2. Lifetime installs: ~4,800
  3. Last 30 days installs: 87
  4. Last 30 days uninstalls: 72
  5. Uninstall breakdown (last 30 days):

    • Same day: 14

    • 1–14 days: 3

    • 15–90 days: 5

    • 91+ days: 47 (65% of uninstalls)

When we expanded this to the last 90 days, we noticed that over 50% of all uninstalls are from merchants who installed the app more than 90 days ago, and some even cancelled their subscription 1–2 years ago — yet only now are uninstalling.

My questions:

  1. Does uninstall activity (especially from old merchants) impact Shopify App Store ranking?

  2. Is this kind of delayed uninstall behaviour common in your apps too? (i.e., users cancelling subscription long ago but uninstalling much later)

  3. Could Shopify be cleaning up “stale” app connections automatically after store or account inactivity?

  4. With a solid rating and reviews, could these legacy uninstalls be the reason behind a drop in app ranking?

  5. What can be done to minimize the ranking impact of old/unrelated uninstalls?

We’re trying to debug why our app ranking dropped even though our active users are satisfied, reviews are strong, and recent installs are stable.

Any insights, official clarification, or examples from other apps would be hugely helpful.

Thanks in advance.

3

Hi @Sameer_Pathan

The app store algorithm looks at a lot of signals and is continuously evolving to make sure the right merchants discover the right apps for them. This doc describes methods for growing installs on yourt app Go-to-market success