The Celebrity Effect on App Store Optimization & Search Trends
In today’s world, it’s no surprise that celebrities hold a lot of search power. In 2025, global interest in celebrities remains as significant as ever, with certain figures attracting substantial attention depending on their virality.
Taylor Swift emerged as the most Googled person (according to Google Trends and Glimpse), garnering approximately 10.75 million searches in a 30-day period. Other prominent figures searched include Cristiano Ronaldo, with about 5.06 million searches, and Lionel Messi with 4.82 million searches during the same timeframe.
Overall, Google processes over 3.5 billion searches daily, translating to more than 40,000 searches per second (Source: WSR). While specific data on the exact number of celebrity-related searches is not readily or easily available, the substantial search volumes for top celebrities indicate a significant portion of daily queries are dedicated to them.
This coincides with current events and social media trends—a majority of daily searches and queries about certain celebrities can occur at the same time as a viral social media post about said celebrity.
How Does This Translate to App Store Optimization and Searching on App Stores?
According to Positive Marketing, non-traditional search engines such as TikTok are slowly becoming the go-to for Gen Z and beyond. Research reveals that 40% of TikTok users rely on or use the platform as a search engine, with this figure soaring to 64% among Gen Z. This growing trend raises important questions about its impact on app stores and the visibility of popular apps: Can this form of non-traditional searching impact apps on the app store?
Get Ready For The Rabbit Hole: Sabrina Carpenter, TikTok, and Teeth
Guess she shouldn’t have her me-espresso.
A recent trending search on TikTok was focused on Sabrina Carpenter’s teeth. Unfortunately, as we should be aware, every detail of a celebrity’s appearance comes under intense public scrutiny. Teeth, like other parts of their image, are no exception.
As veneers and other cosmetic dental procedures become increasingly popular and accessible, searches related to implants, plastic surgery, and similar topics have surged, reflecting society’s growing fascination with aesthetic transformations.
Below you will find TikTok videos tagged under the category “Sabrina Carpenter Teeth Analysis.” Note the generous amount of views and likes on most of the videos.
As marketers working for a cosmetic dental company, what course of action would you take in this case to further your brand visibility?
Surprisingly, we do have an answer to that question! Invisalign, the company behind the popular invisible dental device, owns an app dedicated to treatment monitoring and showcasing potential post-treatment results.
They have been consistently bidding on the Apple Search Ads keyword ‘Sabrina Carpenter.’ Who would have guessed there was any connection between the two without diving into the rabbit hole we explored?
As they continue to pay for this ad space, we can assume that this is lucrative for them. As time goes by and people forget, we can expect the search volume for her teeth to decrease and perhaps Invisalign will decide to stop bidding on this keyword.
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Custom Product Pages, Yousician, and Billie Eilish: A Match Made in Heaven
Billie Eilish, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter known for her distinctive voice, introspective and deep lyrics, and genre-defying music, rose to fame with her debut single “Ocean Eyes” at a very young age. Since then, she has become a global icon celebrated for her authenticity, artistic innovation, and connection with fans.
If you owned a music-related app, how would you leverage a popular artist such as Billie into your app creatives and marketing?
Yousician, an app focused on teaching users various instruments, licenses popular music as learning material for its audience. In the summer of 2024, they took it a step further by partnering with Billie Eilish herself. Leveraging the singer’s immense popularity for their app store optimization (ASO), Yousician created a custom product page designed to attract and engage her fans.
Custom product pages enable you to create additional versions of your app’s product page, with each one highlighting different features or content, which can be accessed through specific URLs that you can use in different contexts.
The ultimate goal is to create a specific landing page and creative for different audiences, which in turn improves conversions. According to Apptweak, ‘Billie Eilish’ (as a search term on iOS) has a volume of 24, with a maximum reach of 480 downloads daily for the #1 ranked app for this search term.
While we don’t have exact figures on the surge in downloads Yousician experienced from this sponsorship, it was clearly impactful enough to inspire the creation of Billie-focused screenshots and creatives specifically for the app store.
Taylor Swift and Ads: how One of the Mobile World’s Most Searched Celebrities Generates Ad Revenue for the App Store
It’s no secret that Taylor Swift is one of the leading artists of the 21st century. Her popularity and influence generate a lot of revenue, especially in cities that host her concerts, where people from all over the world fly in to see her perform.
On the App Store, Taylor boasts a search volume of 43, according to MobileAction—one of the highest for any celebrity. This search term has become a competitive battleground for apps eager to capture a share of those highly valuable user searches.
In the graph below, you can see the sheer number of different apps vying for impression share on Apple search ads for this keyword. From Bible coloring book apps to radio and music apps and even popular games like Brawl Stars, these apps are making a definite effort to target the demographic that is searching for the singer.
In conclusion, we can declare that celebrity searches undeniably have a significant impact on the App Store, driving competition among apps to capture user attention through targeted keywords and creative strategies. As public interest in celebrities remains strong, leveraging their names in search optimization and marketing campaigns continues to be a powerful tool for boosting visibility and downloads.
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