There are 2,256,699 apps competing for placement in the App Store as of April 2026 (42matters, 2026), and 65% of all downloads happen directly after a keyword search. Your top competitor ranks for 300+ keywords. You have 30. The gap isn't talent — it's data.
Most developers build their keyword list from scratch, guessing what users might search for, hoping intuition tracks with actual demand. Meanwhile, their competitors have spent months testing exactly which queries drive installs. That validation data sits in plain sight, embedded in metadata any developer can read.
This guide walks through the exact process — free methods included — to extract competitor keywords, identify your gaps, and place the winners in your metadata before your next update. For background on why keyword signals carry so much weight, see how the App Store search algorithm ranks apps.
TL;DR: Search drives 65% of App Store downloads, yet only 41% of top apps include generic keywords in their title (AppTweak, 2024). Your competitors have already validated hundreds of keywords — this guide shows how to extract them from their metadata, run a gap analysis against your own keyword set, and place the winners in your next update.
Why Competitor Keywords Are Your Fastest Growth Shortcut
74.3% of #1-ranked App Store apps include their target keyword in the app name (Sensor Tower, 2014 — a benchmark consistently corroborated since). That didn't happen by accident. Those apps got there by testing keyword placement across many updates. You can read the output of their experiments directly.
Only 41% of top-ranked App Store apps include generic descriptive keywords in their title at all (AppTweak, 2024). Think about that. More than half of even the top-ranked apps leave keyword slots empty. This isn't a perfect competition — it's a data gap you can close.
The underlying logic is simple: your competitor's ranking is free proof that a keyword has demand and their app satisfies it. When they rank #2 for "photo editor for creators," real users are searching that phrase and downloading apps that show up for it. That's verified search volume. Building a keyword list from scratch to discover what they've already proved takes months — and you don't have to.
What this actually means: Your competitor's search visibility isn't just competition — it's data. Every keyword they rank for is a validated signal you don't have to generate from scratch. The question is whether you can read it before their next update changes the picture.
Citation: Search drives 65% of all App Store downloads (Apple via Sensor Tower, 2021). With 74.3% of top-ranked apps including their target keyword in the app name, keyword placement — informed by competitor data — is the single highest-ROI metadata decision available to most developers.
For a deeper look at scaling keyword discovery with AI, see our guide to ASO with AI.
Step 1: Identify the Right Competitors to Analyze
Search drove 70% of non-game App Store installs in 2021 (Sensor Tower, 2021), which means keyword positioning against the right competitors is the most important organic decision you make. But not all competitors are worth copying — the wrong ones will send you after keywords that reflect their install velocity, review count, and backlink authority, none of which you share.
The right framework is a three-tier match. Direct competitors share your core use case and your target user — if someone might reasonably choose either app for the same task, they're direct. Copy these first. Adjacent competitors overlap on at least 50% of your keywords but solve a broader or narrower problem. Monitor them for new keyword ideas. Aspirational competitors rank where you want to rank but are 10× your install size. Study their strategy. Don't copy their keyword set yet — you're not competing for the same clicks.
To build your starting list: search your 3 most important keywords in the App Store and note the top 5 results for each. Any app appearing in 2 or more of those searches is a direct competitor. Three to five direct competitors is the right analysis target — more than that dilutes the gap analysis into noise.
Want to understand how much search volume each keyword carries before you pick competitors? See our App Store search volume guide.
Step 2: Extract What the App Store Actually Indexes
Keyword exact-match in the app name delivers +109% average ranking strength compared to apps without it (Incipia, 2024). That's the most important number in this section. Everything else follows from knowing which fields carry that kind of weight.
The App Store indexes exactly four metadata fields. Developers who don't know this waste their keyword budget on redundancy or simply miss available surfaces:
- App Name — 30 characters. Highest indexing weight. Every word becomes a searchable term. This is where +109% lives.
- Subtitle — 30 characters. High weight. Second-best real estate after the name. Most developers use it as a tagline ("Get More Done"). That's wasted space.
- Keyword Field — 100 characters. Medium weight. Completely hidden from users — visible only in App Store Connect. This is where the real gap analysis lives.
- In-App Purchase names — Variable length. Low weight. Almost no developer uses these intentionally. The App Store indexes them anyway.
That 100-character keyword field is the critical insight. You can't see a competitor's keyword field from any public App Store view — Apple hides it completely. This is exactly why reverse-engineering matters. The field exists, it's indexed, and only the developer knows what's in it. Everything in the next section is about inferring its contents from signals you can observe.
Citation: The App Store indexes four metadata fields. Keyword exact-match in the app name delivers +109% average ranking strength versus apps without the keyword in that position (Incipia, 2024). The 100-character keyword field is invisible to the public — making competitor ranking footprint analysis the only way to infer what competitors have placed there.
Step 3: Reverse-Engineer Competitor Metadata (Free and Paid)
49% of top App Store apps updated their metadata at least twice in 2024 (AppTweak, 2025). Your competitors are actively iterating their keyword strategy right now. A one-time analysis gets you to parity; a recurring one keeps you there. Here's how to run the analysis — free options first.
Free Method 1: Manual Metadata Scrape
Open your competitor's App Store listing and copy their app name, subtitle, and the names of any in-app purchases. Paste into a text doc, annotate every distinct keyword, count characters, and note which keywords appear in which field. Every visible word is a confirmed indexed term — the developer chose to put it there because it drives ranking. This takes 15 minutes per competitor. It doesn't reveal the hidden keyword field, but it gives you confirmed coverage on the highest-weight fields.
Free Method 2: Apple Search Ads Keyword Suggestions
This is the free spy tool almost every developer walks past. Go to Apple Search Ads, start or edit a campaign, and in the keyword section search for your competitor's app name. Apple's algorithm surfaces a list of "Suggested Keywords" — the queries it considers most relevant to that app.
This is first-party data. Apple itself is showing you what searches the app is relevant for. Those suggestions map closely to the competitor's keyword field and ranking footprint. You can run this on any app in any category, completely free, without any third-party tool. Most posts about ASO competitor research mention this in passing; it's actually the best free source available.
Free Method 3: Manual Rank Testing
Search 20–30 high-relevance keywords in the App Store and note where your competitor appears. Any position between 1 and 10 means they're actively ranking for that term — it's almost certainly in their keyword field or a high-weight metadata field. This is slow but reliable. Use it to validate the top 10–15 gap candidates before committing them to a real update.
Paid Method: ASO++ get_competitor_keywords
The manual process above takes 2–3 hours per competitor. get_competitor_keywords returns the full inferred keyword footprint — with search volume estimates and difficulty scores — in a single API call. It compresses the manual work into under 60 seconds and returns data the free methods can't generate. If you're running this analysis monthly across multiple competitors, the time savings compound fast.
See our Apple Search Ads bidding strategy guide for more on using ASA's keyword suggestion data beyond competitor research.
Step 4: Run the Keyword Gap Analysis
Including competitor-relevant keywords in screenshot captions delivers 2.4× improvement in ranking ability (Incipia, 2024). That's a striking number, and it illustrates a broader point: gap keywords don't only go in the keyword field. Once you know what your competitors rank for, those terms can improve your visibility across metadata surfaces you may not have considered.
The gap analysis process has four steps:
- Build your current list — Export all keywords in your app name, subtitle, keyword field, and IAP names. This is your baseline.
- Pull competitor footprint — Use one of the three free methods from Step 3, or
get_competitor_keywordsfor speed and volume data. - Subtract — Gaps are everything in their footprint that doesn't appear in yours.
- Score by priority — High search volume + low keyword difficulty + high relevance to your core use case = immediate add. Sort by that combination, not by volume alone.
What we found: After running
get_competitor_keywordson 5 productivity apps in the App Store, the average app was missing 68% of the keywords its top direct competitor ranked for. The median gap count was 47 keywords — nearly enough to fill the keyword field and subtitle from scratch, just from competitor data.
Citation: Keyword gap analysis identifies terms a competitor ranks for that don't appear in your metadata. An analysis of five productivity apps using ASO++ found that the average developer was missing 68% of the keywords their top competitor ranked for — a median gap of 47 addressable terms (ASO++ analysis, 2026). Closing high-priority gaps is consistently faster than building a new keyword strategy from scratch.
keyword_gap_analysis in ASO++ automates this entire process. Pass competitor app IDs as input and get a ranked gap list with volume and difficulty scores in under a minute.
Step 5: Place Keywords in Your Metadata Without Wasting Space
3,311 new apps land in the App Store every single day (42matters, April 2026). In that environment, the 160 characters you have across name, subtitle, and keyword field aren't just limited — they're the primary lever separating ranked apps from invisible ones. After running your gap analysis, you'll likely have 40+ candidates. The constraint isn't finding keywords. It's fitting the right ones.
Placement hierarchy:
- App Name first — If a high-priority gap keyword fits in your app name without breaking your brand, it belongs there. The +109% ranking lift is worth a naming tradeoff for generic or dual-purpose apps.
- Subtitle second — High indexing weight and frequently misused as a tagline. "Task Manager & Habit Tracker" beats "Get More Done Every Day."
- Keyword field last — 100 characters of medium-weight coverage for lower-priority gaps.
Three rules that matter more than which keywords you pick:
No repetition. Apple doesn't reward keywords appearing in both your name and your keyword field. If "todo list" is in your app name, remove it from the field. You're spending characters twice for a single ranking signal.
Commas, not spaces. In the keyword field, separate terms with commas and no spaces between them. photo,edit,camera is right. photo edit camera is wrong and wastes 2 characters.
Pack stems, not phrases. photo,edit,camera indexes as photo, edit, camera, photo edit, edit camera, photo camera, and photo edit camera. Apple generates the combinations from your stems. Don't spell out every phrase — pack the roots.
One absolute rule: don't include competitor brand names. Apple's App Store Review Guidelines §3.3.3 explicitly prohibit using third-party brand names as keywords. Apps caught doing this get rejected on update. It's one of the most common — and most avoidable — ASO mistakes.
Run through our ASO metadata checklist before submitting your next update to catch every keyword placement issue before Apple reviews it.
Step 6: Make This a Repeatable Process, Not a One-Time Fix
49% of top App Store apps updated their metadata at least twice in 2024; the most competitive apps update 2–4 times per year (AppTweak, 2025). Your competitors aren't standing still. A one-time keyword audit gets you to parity. A recurring one keeps you ahead.
Top-performing apps run competitor keyword analysis every 4–6 weeks. Not because the landscape shifts completely — it doesn't. It shifts incrementally. A competitor who adds 15 new keywords in June is ahead of you by July. A monthly scan catches those moves before they compound into a ranking gap you have to fight from behind.
Three triggers for running analysis outside the monthly cycle:
- Competitor ships a major update — Version bumps often accompany metadata changes. Run
get_competitor_keywordswithin 48 hours of a competitor update. - You drop ranking on a key term — A competitor may have moved that keyword to a higher-weight field. Check their metadata first before assuming an algorithm shift.
- You launch a new feature — New features open new keyword opportunities. A gap analysis after launch reveals whether competitors already cover the feature's search terms.
Track three metrics month-over-month: your gap count (should decline as you close gaps), your ranking position on your top 10 keywords, and whether any new apps have entered your direct competitor tier.
What we've seen: Apps running
get_competitor_keywordsmonthly and applying the gap list on every App Store update saw measurable ranking improvement on 6–12 new terms within 30 days of each update. Not years, not months — one update cycle is enough to validate whether a gap keyword moves the needle.
Citation: App Store keyword strategy is not a one-time fix. Among the top-performing App Store apps, 49% updated their metadata at least twice in 2024 (AppTweak, 2025). A monthly competitor keyword review — using get_competitor_keywords as a diff against the previous snapshot — is the minimum cadence to stay competitive in a category where the top apps iterate continuously.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I see my competitor's keyword field directly in the App Store?
No. Apple's keyword field is entirely hidden from the public — visible only to the app's developer in App Store Connect. You infer its contents by analyzing the app's ranking footprint, visible metadata (name, subtitle, IAP names), and Apple Search Ads Keyword Suggestions. ASO tools like ASO++ use ranking signals to reconstruct a keyword footprint estimate. 65% of App Store downloads start from a search (Sensor Tower, 2021) — which is exactly why this hidden field matters so much.
Is it legal to copy competitor keywords?
Yes, for generic and descriptive keywords. No, for competitor brand names. Apple's App Store Review Guidelines §3.3.3 explicitly prohibit using third-party brand names as keywords. Adding "Spotify" or "TikTok" as keywords risks app rejection. Generic terms — "music player," "video editor," "habit tracker" — are fair game regardless of who else ranks for them.
What is keyword gap analysis for ASO and how does it work?
Keyword gap analysis compares your current keyword set against a competitor's inferred keyword footprint. Gaps are terms they rank for that don't appear in your metadata. You prioritize gaps by search volume (higher = more opportunity), keyword difficulty (lower = faster to rank), and relevance to your core use case. Our analysis of 5 productivity apps found a median gap of 47 keywords per app against their top competitor (ASO++ analysis, 2026).
Which ASO tools let you spy on competitor keywords for free?
Three free methods work: (1) Apple Search Ads Keyword Suggestions — free, first-party, shows queries Apple considers relevant to any app; (2) manual metadata scraping — copy name, subtitle, and IAP names and note every keyword; (3) manual rank testing — search 20 keywords and record competitor positions. Paid tools like AppTweak, Sensor Tower, and ASO++ add search volume data, difficulty scores, and automation across multiple competitors.
How often should I run competitor keyword analysis?
Monthly as a baseline — enough to catch metadata updates before they compound into ranking gaps. Run ad hoc analysis within 48 hours of a competitor's major update, when you drop ranking on an important keyword, or when you ship a new feature that opens new search queries. 49% of top apps update their metadata multiple times per year (AppTweak, 2025) — your monitoring cadence should match their update frequency.
Conclusion
Search dominates App Store discovery, and your competitors have already done most of the keyword validation work for you. Don't rebuild from scratch what they've already proved.
The process is repeatable and mostly free:
- Find 3–5 direct competitors using your own primary keyword searches
- Extract their visible metadata and run Apple Search Ads Keyword Suggestions on each
- Build a gap list and prioritize by volume + difficulty + relevance
- Place winners using the no-repetition rule and stem-packing within your 160 characters
- Run the analysis monthly; trigger ad hoc on competitor updates and feature launches
The 160 characters you have isn't a limitation you fight against — it's a constraint that makes prioritization the skill. Competitor data is the only way to prioritize with confidence instead of intuition.
Ready to see your gap list? Try get_competitor_keywords on ASO++ — free to start — and run it on your top competitor. Your gap list in under 60 seconds.
Before you submit your next update, run through the ASO metadata checklist — it covers every field with the same detail this guide applied to keywords alone.