Among the top 200 mobile apps only 22 percent are using “deep links” from their websites into their mobile apps. This is according to an analysis by URX.
Deep links are those that send a user from a website to a relevant page, piece of content or search result within a mobile app as opposed to the app’s homepage. Google and Facebook are both promoting this as a way to webify the mobile app universe.
URX details its methodology in its blog post. Essentially the firm looked for “tag sets proposed by Twitter, Facebook, Google, or URX omnilink tags.” Below are the findings by platform — meaning tags on websites that linked into apps appearing on these operating systems/devices.
Source: URX
The findings by vertical vary. Apps in the Entertainment, News, Lifestyle and Music categories were ahead of others in their adoption of deep links. URX includes the following types of apps in the “lifestyle” category: Medium, Tumblr, Wikipedia and Zillow.
In the News category URX elaborated on the uneven penetration of deep link usage:
Analyzing over 130 of the top ranking News apps, 4 of the top 10 apps have deeplink tags (ABC News, BuzzFeed, Flipboard, and Fox News), but just 20% of the top 50 and 11% of the top 100 do. ABC and Fox are the only two with tags for each of their Android, iPhone, and iPad apps.
Source: URX
Deep linking is still relatively new and standards haven’t yet emerged. It will become the norm in the relatively near future. However companies and publishers are still trying to catch up to the idea.
Google’s recent announcement of app indexing for all Android apps in search results will certainly help accelerate the trend.
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