88% of Google Play Game Downloads Come From Search and Browse, 8% Higher Than the App Store

Last month, Sensor Tower published a study analyzing App Store download sources. According to our latest follow-up analysis looking at Google Play store download sources, 88 percent of game downloads came from organic search and browse, compared to only 80 percent of App Store downloads.

Games Rely on Search and Browse for the Bulk of Their Google Play Downloads

According to our analysis of app downloads between May 2017 and April 2018, only 10 percent of game installs on Google Play came from third party sources, such as in-app advertisements or links from the web, and 2 percent from AdWords.

At this point, Google does not provide data on the split between search and browse among the organic sources. However, a quick comparison to the App Store download sources can provide some insights, such as the fact that 80 percent of game downloads from the App Store were from search and browse, with 56 percent coming from search and 24 percent from browse. We will learn if a similar split applies to Google Play once more data is available.

We also compared download sources between free and paid games. As most games are free, the sources for free games are very similar to those for games overall, with 88 percent of installs from searching or browsing the Google Play Store.

Even among paid games, organic sources accounted for 79 percent of downloads, in stark contrast to the 42 percent of paid non-game app installs from search and browse. This rate is similar to the App Store sources for paid games, where 46 percent of downloads were from search and 32 percent from browse, adding up to a total of 78 percent from organic sources.

Casino Apps Roll the Dice with Third Party Sources

While most games depend on browse and search for the vast majority of their downloads, this is not the case for all games subcategories. Only 60 percent of installs for Casino games in our sample came from organic sources. The rest of these games' downloads were mostly from third party sources and AdWords, contributing to 33 percent and 7 percent of installs, respectively. Puzzle games also more heavily utilized third party sources, which accounted for 20 percent of their downloads.

Meanwhile, other subcategories of games rely even more substantially on browse and search. Simulation and Arcade games each received 94 percent of their downloads from these organic sources.

Our analysis reveals that an even higher proportion of game downloads come from browse and search on the Google Play store than the App Store. And while third parties and Google Search ads can certainly provide a nice boost in downloads, it is clear that most games still depend on organic sources for the majority of their installs.

We'll have additional insights on Google Play download sources soon.