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App Store keyword research
Ranking on the App Store comes down to about 160 characters of text. Here's what Apple actually reads, and how to spend those characters well.
Apple indexes your app name (30 chars), subtitle (30 chars) and keyword field (100 chars). It does not index your description. Each word counts once across all three. That's roughly 160 characters deciding every search you appear in.
On this page
What Apple actually indexes
This is the part that surprises people coming from Google Play: your App Store description is not searchable. You can write four thousand beautiful words and none of them will win you a single ranking. The description's job is to convert someone who already found you.
| Field | Limit | Indexed for search? |
|---|---|---|
| App name | 30 | Yes — the heaviest weighting |
| Subtitle | 30 | Yes |
| Keyword field | 100 | Yes — hidden from shoppers |
| Description | 4000 | No |
| Promotional text | 170 | No — but editable without a new build |
Apple also picks up your category and, to some degree, in-app purchase names. But the 160 characters above are the part you fully control.
The four ways people waste the keyword field
1. Spaces after commas
Write fitness,workout,gym, not fitness, workout, gym. Each space is a
character you paid for and got nothing back. Over a full field that's often 8–12 wasted characters — an
entire extra keyword.
2. Repeating words you already used
Apple counts each word once across name + subtitle + keywords. If your name is
"Somni: Sleep Sounds" then sleep and sounds are already indexed. Putting them in
the keyword field again buys nothing. This one mistake routinely burns a quarter of the field.
3. Keywords that are just your app name rearranged
Nobody searches for permutations of your brand — they search for the problem. Your keywords should be the words a stranger types when they don't know you exist.
4. Chasing only high-popularity terms
"fitness" has enormous search volume and you will never rank for it. A term with moderate demand and weak competition sends you more installs than a giant term where you sit at position 200.
Your subtitle should complement the name with new benefit words, never restate it. Name, subtitle and keywords are three non-overlapping sets — treat any repeated word as a bug.
Popularity, Difficulty and Opportunity
Raw search volume alone is a bad decision-making tool. Three numbers together are far more useful:
- Popularity — roughly how many people search the term. High popularity, no ranking = no installs.
- Difficulty — how hard it is to beat what's already ranking, based on the strength and count of competing apps.
- Opportunity — what you actually act on. It weighs demand against how contested the term is.
The useful mental model: a term is worth taking when demand exists but the competition is beatable. A term with high difficulty and high popularity is "crowded" — real demand, but you're fighting incumbents with years of downloads behind them. A term with low popularity and low difficulty is simply "low demand" — you'll rank first and nobody will see it. The wins live in between, and they're almost always more specific than you'd like them to be.
Research keywords without a subscription
Storeboard estimates Popularity, Difficulty and Opportunity from Apple's own public signals, country by country — on your Mac, no account, no monthly fee.
Download for MacWhy keywords are country-specific
Here's the one that costs people the most money. English is not one market. The US, UK, Australia and Canada each have their own App Store storefront, their own competitors and their own search habits — and each is a separate localization with its own 100-character keyword field.
That means English (US), English (UK), English (AU) and English (CA) give you four keyword fields, not one. You can target "torch" in the UK and "flashlight" in the US. You can chase a term in Australia that's hopeless in America. Most apps fill in English (US) and leave the other three empty — which is three free ranking opportunities handed to competitors.
The same logic runs deeper for genuinely different languages: a literal translation of your English keywords is usually the wrong answer, because people in that market don't search using translated English — they search using their own words for the problem.
A research workflow that works
- Start from the problem, not the product. List what someone types when they need what your app does and have never heard of it.
- Check each term's Popularity and Difficulty in the country you're targeting — not globally.
- Cut anything you can't win. Position 80 on a giant term is worth less than position 3 on a modest one.
- Lay out name and subtitle first, then fill the keyword field with words neither of them already contains.
- Repeat per country. Don't copy the US field into the UK — that's the whole point of having separate fields.
- Revisit after each release. Rankings move, competitors ship, and promotional text lets you react without a new build.
FAQ
Does Apple index my description?
No. The App Store does not use your description for search rankings — that's a Google Play behaviour. Your searchable text is the name, subtitle and keyword field.
Should I use singular or plural keywords?
Pick one and don't spend characters on both. Apple handles a fair amount of stemming, and duplicating singular/plural pairs is one of the quieter ways to waste the field.
Do I need to include my category as a keyword?
Usually not — your category is already associated with your app. Spend those characters on terms that describe what makes you different.
How often should I change keywords?
Keywords require a new app version, so they move on your release cadence. Promotional text does not — it's the field to use when you want to say something new this week.