Welcome to my online directory, this area is great for SEO descriptions!

The Chrome Web Store is very generous with the term “Popular”. The fact is, you don’t need the popularity status of Jennifer Lopez, Lindsey Lohan or even Kelly Osborne to be listed as Popular on the Chrome Web Storefront (homepage). We are speaking of the 9 apps that appear at or above the fold of the Google Chrome Web Store page.

The cycle time for this very visible storefront real estate is about 10 minutes. We observed over 150 cycles.

We awarded visibility points, “Viz Points”, based on app position in the Popular area.

Thus a Viz Score was achieved over the observation period. A perfect score would have been achieved if an app was listed in the top left position for the duration. This score would be 15.

Here are the results of our findings -

The chart’s blue line (primary axis) represents user count. Note - Entangler and Poppit have been omitted from the user count because of their default installation advantage (Entangler did not appear, Poppit scored a viz score of .14).

The red columns (y2 axis) represent the Viz Score.

Our first conclusion, to be considered Popular, you must be in the top 100 for total users of your app. The sole exception to this is WGT Golf Game. The WGT Golf Game has 3,649 users which ranks 165. However, it appeared in the 3 and 5 position during the observations.

Second conclusion for apps user ranking of 26 thru 100, there appears to be essentially random visibility awarded.

Finally, if your app makes it to the top 25 in user rankings, you may be awarded with additional visibility.

Next week we explore who Google likes to “Feature”.

Any thoughts on this one? Please use the comment box below.

Here are the top 20 apps from a visibility standpoint -