App Store keyword research is choosing the search terms your app should rank for by checking three things per term: do people type it (autocomplete), can you win it (the ten apps already ranking), and does it describe your app. The whole method works with the App Store itself; free tools only speed up the reading.
Step 1 · Write a seed list from the job your app does
Start with the words a stranger would type to find what your app does, not with your brand. Three places give you candidates without guessing:
- Your own reviews. The words users choose to describe the app are often not the ones in your description.
- Competitors' titles and subtitles. Those two fields are public and indexed, so they show which terms other apps are targeting on purpose. Read them for concepts; Apple's guidelines forbid using other apps' names as keywords.
- Your category's vocabulary. Tasks, objects and outcomes ("split bill", "receipt", "expense"), not adjectives.
Keep single words and short phrases in the list. The keyword combiner turns a word list into two- and three-word candidates, and Step 2 shows which of them people actually type.
Step 2 · Check demand with App Store autocomplete
Type a candidate into the App Store search box to collect suggestion ideas for the selected storefront. A suggestion can help build a research list, but its presence does not establish an exact search count and its absence does not establish zero demand.
Keep suggestion evidence separate from Apple Ads search popularity. Record the storefront and date with either observation. The existing comparison of 1,000 popular terms across five storefronts found a rank correlation of ρ = 0.30; it does not turn suggestions into search counts. The sample and limits are recorded in autocomplete demand vs search popularity.
NOTE: Read autocomplete in the storefront you are researching. Suggestions in the US store say nothing about Germany or Turkey — each storefront is its own search engine.
Step 3 · Read the top-10 wall to judge difficulty
Review the apps currently competing for the term. Rating counts and title matches provide context for that result set; read them alongside relevance and the observed ranks.
- The number beside a term is its ratings wall: it shows how established the apps you would compete with on that term are. Use it to compare terms; it does not tell you how many ratings you need or guarantee a rank.
- Title matches — whether the competing apps carry the term in their app names. That shows competitors targeting it deliberately.
Read keyword difficulty as a comparison aid, alongside the competing apps and observation date. It is not a probability that your app will rank. Use the free keyword difficulty tool to inspect one term in one storefront before adding it to your research list.
NOTE: Hypothetical example: two relevant terms have different competing apps and rating counts. Record those differences and test a candidate against your own baseline; the competitor’s rating count alone does not establish whether you can rank.
Step 4 · Keep terms that are relevant, searched and winnable
Sort candidates into test now, research further and exclude. Test relevant terms with enough evidence to define a baseline. Research terms whose demand or competitive context is uncertain. Exclude terms that misdescribe your app; an absent suggestion alone is not enough to discard a term.
Relevance is not optional. Apple lists terms that are not relevant to the app, trademarked terms and competing app names among the keyword uses that lead to rejection, and a user who finds you through an unrelated term is unlikely to install.
Step 5 · Place the words: title, subtitle, then 100 characters
On the App Store, text relevance comes from the app name, subtitle, keyword field and primary category. Put the strongest target in the name (30 characters) or subtitle (30 characters), where people also read it, and use the hidden keyword field for the rest:
- 100 characters, commas between terms, no spaces after commas.
- Don't repeat words already in your name, subtitle or category, and skip plurals of words you already have — Apple treats them as duplicates.
- No filler such as "the", "app" or "game".
The keyword field tool packs a list into 100 characters and flags duplicates with your title; the rules are explained in the 100-character keyword field, and every field's limit is in App Store and Google Play character limits.
Google Play has no keyword field. Play reads the title (30), short description (80) and full description (4,000), and Google's own help asks for SEO best practices in the description within its spam policy.
Step 6 · Repeat per storefront, then measure
Each localization you add in App Store Connect has its own name, subtitle and keyword field, and some storefronts index a second locale next to their default — see ASO localization. Translating an English keyword list is not research: demand and the wall have to be read again in each country.
After the release, the only proof is rank. Check a single term with the free rank check; Storelift tracks rank daily to the top 200 on iOS and about 30 on Google Play across 175 storefronts, and its keyword discovery surfaces terms you already rank for but never tracked.
FAQ
Q: How do I do App Store keyword research for free?
A: Use the App Store itself: type candidate terms into search to see whether autocomplete suggests them, then open the top results and look at how established the competing apps are and whether they carry the term in their names. Free tools such as the keyword difficulty and keyword field tools only automate those readings.
Q: Is there a free App Store keyword research tool?
A: Yes, several parts of the job have free tools: keyword difficulty for the top-10 wall, keyword field for packing 100 characters, keyword combiner for candidates and rank check for your position.
Q: Can I see a competitor's App Store keywords?
A: Not the keyword field — Apple does not publish it, so no tool can read it from the store. You can see a competitor's name and subtitle, and you can see which terms they rank for by searching them.
Q: How many keywords can an App Store app target?
A: Apple publishes no recommended count. The space is fixed: 30 characters of name, 30 of subtitle and 100 of keyword field per localization, and words from those fields are combined when matching searches.
Q: Is Google Play keyword research different?
A: Yes. Play has no keyword field, so terms have to sit in the title, short description or full description, where users read them. Play search results list apps without their rating counts, so on Play you judge a term's difficulty from the titles and short descriptions of the apps already in the top results.
Originally published on Storelift.
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