How keyword research works

Storeline’s keyword research studies the apps you actually compete with — in every language your app supports — and, when you connect an Apple Ads account, weighs the results against Apple’s own search popularity. The output is a concrete, localized keyword strategy per language. Here is exactly what happens when you hit “Research keywords”.

1. You choose the competitors

You add the App Store apps you consider competitors — by name search or App Store link. They’re saved to your project, so the list is yours to curate: swap in a rising rival or remove an irrelevant one at any time, and future research runs use the updated list.

2. We read their public listings, per storefront

For each language in your project, Storeline looks up your competitors’ listings on the matching App Store storefront — the German storefront for German, the Japan storefront for Japanese, and so on — using Apple’s public iTunes catalog. That matters because a good competitor localizes too: their German title contains the German search terms. If an app isn’t published on a storefront, we fall back to its US listing rather than dropping it.

Only public App Store metadata is read — the same name, subtitle, genre, and description anyone can see on the store. These lookups run in your browser, straight from Apple.

3. Every phrase is scored

From each listing we pull out the candidate phrases and rank them — weighing where a competitor chose to put a phrase against how much of the market uses it. A term everyone in your category ships is a term people search for; a term buried where nobody looks is not.

Your own listing is ranked the same way, as the baseline. High-scoring phrases your competitors use and you don’t become your missing opportunities.

One honest caveat: Apple doesn’t index an app’s description for search, so where a phrase sits in a rival’s description tells you what they emphasise, not what they rank for. It’s still the best signal public metadata offers — Apple publishes nobody’s keyword field — and we’d rather say that than dress it up.

4. Apple’s own search volume, if you connect Apple Ads

Competitor listings tell you which words the market uses — not which words people search. Those are different things, and only Apple knows the second. Connect an Apple Ads account in Settings and Storeline reads two things through the Apple Ads Platform API: Apple’s ranked keyword suggestions for your app on each storefront, and its search popularity score, 0–100, for the terms in play.

That changes what a good keyword looks like: a term few rivals use but many people search is the best kind of opportunity, and a term every rival ships with low popularity isn’t worth a character of your keyword field. Keywords that clear Apple’s reporting bar — roughly 500 searches a week on that storefront — show their score right on the chip; the rest are ranked by competitor usage, and Storeline tells you which is which.

It’s read-only and needs no advertising — no campaign, no ad spend. Settings walks you through connecting it. Without it, keyword research works exactly as described above; you simply don’t get the volume signal.

5. You get a listing, not a word list

The ranked candidates for each language become a suggested title, subtitle and iOS keyword field — written in that language rather than translated word-for-word out of English.

Then the part most tools skip. Apple publishes real rules for the keyword field, and breaking them quietly costs you characters you paid for: repeat a word your title already carries and you bought it twice. Storeline applies those rules itself rather than trusting a model to remember them, and it checks your draft against every field Apple indexes — including ones most tools can’t see, because they don’t hold your screenshots, your in-app purchases or your events. What it can prove, it fixes. What rests on judgement, it shows you, with the characters at stake, and leaves the call to you.

Every suggestion is editable before you apply it, and applying writes it into that language’s localization in your project — nothing touches App Store Connect until you sync.

What it doesn’t do

• No invented search volumes. Without an Apple Ads account there are no traffic numbers at all — any tool showing exact volumes without one is estimating, and we’d rather say so than guess. With Apple Ads connected, the popularity scores you see are Apple’s own, passed through unchanged.
• iOS first. Keyword research currently covers App Store listings. Google Play has no keyword field — its search weighs your title and description directly, where the same suggestions still help as writing input.
• No silent deletions. Where a rule is Apple’s own, we apply it. Where it rests on judgement — and some of the best-known ASO advice does — we show you the trade and what it’s worth in characters, rather than dropping one of your keywords on a guess.
• No private data. Only public store listings are analyzed. The AI step runs with the API key you connected, under the same protections as the rest of Storeline.

Questions

Something unclear, or want to see a capability added? Email support@storeline.dev.