App keyword research: a step-by-step method with free data

What does app keyword research decide?

Keyword research decides which searches your listing competes for. On the App Store that choice fills three small fields: a 30-character name, a 30-character subtitle and a hidden 100-byte keyword field. On Google Play it shapes a 30-character title, an 80-character short description and a 4,000-character full description that people read. With so little space, the choice matters more than the writing.

Apple says the trade-off directly: popular, functional terms "may drive a lot of traffic, but are highly competitive – especially if you are a newer or smaller app", while less common terms "drive lower traffic, but are less competitive". The method below makes that trade-off with numbers instead of guesses.

Step 1: where do you find candidate searches for free?

Start wide. Aim for 50–150 candidates per country before you filter.

Source	Store	What it gives you	Where
Search hints / suggestions	Both	The searches people actually type, in the order the store suggests them	Type your core words letter by letter into the store's search box on a device set to the target country
Rivals' visible text	Both	The words the apps on top chose for their title, subtitle or short description	Their product pages
Your reviews	Both	Your users' own words for problems and features	The ratings and reviews sections of App Store Connect and Play Console
Apple Ads keyword suggestions	App Store	Related terms plus search popularity 1–5	Apple Ads, inside a search results campaign's ad group
Apple Ads search terms report	App Store	Real searches your ads matched, once a term has at least 10 impressions	Apple Ads > Search Terms tab (Search Match or broad match campaigns)
Play Console conversion analysis	Google Play	Search terms that brought visitors to your listing, with their conversion	Grow users > Store performance > Conversion analysis, broken down by search term
App Store Connect Analytics	App Store	Impressions and conversion from App Store search as a source	Analytics, filtered by source type

Apple's own advice for its ads applies here too: start with your app's name and the terms that explain the service your app provides or the need it meets, including use cases that are secondary to the main function.

Step 2: how do you score each search?

Give every candidate four values. Write them into one sheet so the decision is visible.

Column	Question	Scale
Relevance	Would a person who types this be happy to find your app?	Yes / partly / no
Popularity	How often is it searched, relative to other searches?	Apple Ads: 1–5. Uptika: 1–100, from how early the store's autocomplete suggests it
Difficulty	How strong are the apps in today's top 10?	Uptika: 1–100, from the top 10's rating counts (70%) and how many carry the search in their title (30%)
Current rank	Where are you now, if anywhere?	Position, or "not ranked"

Neither store publishes search volumes. Any popularity number, including Apple's 1–5 and Uptika's 1–100, is a relative scale for comparing searches, not a count of searches. Use it to sort, not to forecast installs. The methodology shows how Uptika's popularity and difficulty are computed.

Step 3: which searches do you keep? A decision tree

Is it relevant? If no, drop it, however popular. Apple warns that irrelevant terms make an ad "unlikely to win", and irrelevant traffic will not install.
Is it another app's brand? Drop it from metadata. Guideline 2.3.7 forbids packing metadata with "trademarked terms, popular app names", and Google Play's metadata policy forbids misleading references to other apps. (Bidding on rival brands in Apple Ads is a separate question; see the Apple Ads campaign structure.)
Is popularity close to the floor? If almost nobody types it, keep it only if it costs nothing, for example a word already in your text.
Is difficulty high and your app new? Park it as a long-term target and take the longer, more specific version now ("budget planner for couples" instead of "budget planner").
Are you already at 11–30? This is the striking distance: a small improvement can bring you to the first page. Give these priority.
Otherwise rank the rest by popularity ÷ difficulty and take the top of the list for the fields you have.

Step 4: where does each keyword go?

The field decides how much a keyword can do.

Store	Field	Rule
App Store	App name (30)	Your brand plus the single most valuable search
App Store	Subtitle (30)	The next most valuable search, as a readable phrase
App Store	Keyword field (100 bytes)	Single words, comma-separated, no spaces after commas; never repeat a word from the name, subtitle or category; no plurals of words you already have; no "app" or "game"
Google Play	Title (30)	Brand plus the main search; no emoji, no ALL CAPS, no "#1", "free" or "best"
Google Play	Short description (80)	The main benefit with your main search, written for people
Google Play	Full description (4,000)	Important searches in the first lines and naturally through the text; no keyword lists

Apple tells you not to repeat words that are already in the name, subtitle or category, so treat the three fields as one pool of words. A phrase in the keyword field such as "Real Estate" is allowed, but many teams use single words so that they can combine with the words in the title and subtitle; that is common practice, not something Apple documents. The full field-by-field comparison is in What is ASO?, and Apple's rules are on its App Store search page, linked under Sources.

A worked template

Here is the sheet for an invented habit tracker in one country. The scores are illustrative, to show the logic, not real measurements.

Search	Relevance	Popularity	Difficulty	Rank now	Decision	Field
habit tracker	Yes	High	High	48	Keep, long-term	Name
daily habits	Yes	Medium	Medium	22	Priority: striking distance	Subtitle
routine planner	Yes	Medium	Low	Not ranked	Add	Keyword field: routine, planner
streak	Partly	Medium	Low	Not ranked	Add as a single word	Keyword field
to do list	Partly	High	High	Not ranked	Skip for now	None
(a rival's brand)	No	High	High	Not ranked	Drop	None

How do you localize keyword research?

Do the research again in each country. The same idea is searched with different words, and a direct translation of your English list misses many of them. On the App Store, Apple's localization table also lists more than one language for many storefronts; the official page presents them as supported languages and does not state how they are used for search, so treat any cross-language indexing as something to test, not a fact. Measure popularity per storefront: a search that is wide open in one country can be crowded in the next.

What are the most common keyword research mistakes?

Choosing by popularity alone and ranking nowhere.
Copying a rival's keywords without checking that they fit your app.
Repeating words across fields on the App Store, or writing keyword lists on Google Play.
Treating one popularity number as a search count.
Never checking again. Rivals change their text, seasons change searches, and your app gains features.

How often should you redo it?

Review the list with every release that changes your text, and at least monthly: drop searches where you stay unranked after several weeks and nobody seems to type, move striking-distance terms into stronger fields, and add the terms rivals newly win. Track the result daily, per storefront, as described in keyword rank tracking.

Where does Uptika fit?

Uptika's free Keyword Atlas measures one search's popularity and difficulty on both stores in up to 10 countries, with each market's top 3 apps. In the panel, Kelime avı (keyword hunt) collects new terms from the store's own autocomplete, from rivals' top-10 terms and from your own listing, and reads popularity and difficulty for each; Fırsatlar (opportunities) lists easy, searched terms you do not track and your positions 11–30; and Kelime radarı (keyword radar) tracks the chosen terms every day. The Kelime alanı (keyword field) packer fills the App Store's 100 bytes without repeats. Start free with 10 keywords, or read how App Store and Google Play search ranking works next.

Questions

How do I do keyword research for an app?

Collect candidate searches from the store's own autocomplete, rivals' titles and short texts, your reviews and the stores' free reports; mark each one as relevant or not; measure popularity and difficulty; then put the best relevant ones into the title, subtitle and keyword field (App Store) or title, short and full description (Google Play), and track their ranks daily.

Is there a free app keyword research tool?

Yes. The stores themselves are free sources: App Store search hints and Google Play suggestions show what people type, Apple Ads shows a 1–5 search popularity for keywords, and Play Console shows the search terms that brought visitors to your listing. Uptika's free Keyword Atlas measures one search's popularity and difficulty in up to 10 countries without sign-in.

What are long-tail ASO keywords?

Longer, more specific searches such as "habit tracker for students" instead of "habit tracker". Each is searched less, but fewer strong apps target them and the people who type them know what they want. A new app usually ranks for long-tail searches first.

How do I find keywords for Google Play?

Type your main words into the Play Store search box and note the suggestions, read the titles and short descriptions of the apps on top, and open Play Console > Grow users > Store performance > Conversion analysis to break visitors down by search term. Remember that on Google Play the indexed text is visible, so the searches must read naturally in your title and descriptions.

How do I check Apple Search Ads keyword popularity?

Inside an Apple Ads search results campaign, the keyword suggestion tool and the Recommendations page show search popularity on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is the most popular. Apple describes it as a relative indicator, not a search count.