MapQuest hits No. 1 in US App Store after Lake America snub

MapQuest’s comeback keeps accelerating. On Tuesday, the “OG” mapping app — one many assumed no longer existed — became the No. 1 overall app on the U.S. App Store, up from No. 8 on Monday. The surge in downloads followed MapQuest’s refusal to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” after President Trump’s executive order directed the U.S. geographic naming service to adopt the new name amid his ongoing trade push.

After the August 27 order, MapQuest announced on X that it would not change the lake’s name, while Google Maps and, later, Apple Maps capitulated. MapQuest’s App Store ranking climbed steadily as a result: from No. 128 on August 28 to No. 92 the next day, then to No. 3 this past Monday, August 31 — when it also ranked No. 1 in the Navigation category — before reaching No. 1 across both apps and games by Tuesday.

Since the executive order, the app has been downloaded an estimated 632,000 times in the U.S., according to market intelligence provider Sensor Tower. MapQuest itself said the app had actually seen over 1.5 million installs across the U.S. and Canada combined. The company said many of the new users are actively engaging, not just downloading: “What’s been incredible is that people aren’t just installing our app — they care enough to communicate directly with us — making feature requests and submitting bug reports on social, and in our app reviews,” MapQuest GM Doug Berger told TechCrunch.

The surge has come fast: more than half of MapQuest’s year-to-date U.S. downloads — 56% — occurred between August 27 and September 1, according to Sensor Tower, whose data shows the app’s U.S. downloads rose 123% day-over-day during that stretch and were up more than 50 times compared with the same period last year.

Part of what made MapQuest’s stance resonate was the contrast with its much larger rivals: Google explained its decision by noting it updates names to reflect changes in official government sources such as the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), while Apple didn’t comment. As a much smaller player, MapQuest has more freedom to buck convention — it also still calls the Gulf of Mexico by its original name, rather than Gulf of America. The app, once the original mapping application before ceding ground to Google Maps, is now owned by internet advertising company System1, which acquired it from Verizon in 2019.

Why it matters

MapQuest’s overnight resurgence shows how a smaller company’s lack of exposure to Washington can become a competitive edge: with far less to lose than Apple or Google, it turned a naming dispute into the biggest download spike of its year.