We recently noticed that our app stopped appearing in the top charts for our category. We have not changed the category (Sports) and we've not received any notifications telling us that this was happening.
This happened across all 6 regions the app is available in:
As you can see the app was very high in the charts prior to be removed on August 5th/6th.
We have another app in the same category that gets around 1/4 of the downloads but is showing in the charts.
I understand the charts are probably not just a ranking of the total downloads, but there's not anything else I can see that would cause the rank to go from #1 to not showing in the charts at all, especially across multiple countries at once.
When I contacted Apple Developer Support (case number 102668852595) I was told:
The behavior you observed is expected. App Store charts and search results change regularly and we don’t guarantee app placement. Apps that were ranked before can’t be returned to their previous positions.
I will continue communication with Apple Developer Support but I have a feeling I'm not going to get much useful information. For example why is this expected? I understand that the results will change regularly and nothing is guaranteed but when our ratings and download number remained roughly the same there's nothing to explain this.