App indexing in search results:  another source for installs

Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Drive app installs through App Indexing

Starting this week, people searching on Google can also discover your app if they haven’t installed it yet. If you’ve implemented App Indexing, when indexed content from your app is relevant to a search done on Google on Android devices, people may start to see app install buttons for your app in search results.

Essentially, this means that app indexing is now a ranking signal for SEO.

With this announcement, Google is officially stating that App Indexing is a ranking signal. This is big news for SEO.

Main takeaways:

1. If you have an Android app and if Google can index your app, you now have a ranking advantage over your competitors in Google’s mobile search algorithm (for Android users).
2. This announcement states that this new ranking factor is only for Android users. (Note: A recent report estimates that Android and iOS currently have an equal marketshare – somewhere in the range of 46%-47% of all mobile devices are Android.)
3. We don’t know much about the weight of this new ranking factor in relation to all other current ranking factors.
4. If you have an Android app and Google cannot index it, it is mandatory that an App Indexing project be added to the Dev/SEO Project Calendar.
5. If you don’t have an Android app, in the coming weeks and months you may lose some ranking spots to competitors who have an app. But again, for now it’s only for Android users in mobile search.