Does Promotional Text Affect App Store Search?

Apple states an app is searchable by app name, app subtitle, keywords and company name. Search results are based on text relevance (matches for title, subtitle, keywords and primary category) and user behavior such as downloads, ratings and reviews. Promotional text appears in neither list. Our description answer covers the long text field the same way.

Promotional text, up to 170 characters, lets you tell visitors about current features without submitting a new version. It shows above the description. Use it for time-limited news: an event, a sale, a new feature. The update answer explains how.

Custom product pages can each have their own promotional text and keywords. Apple states a custom page is visible in search only if keywords are assigned to it. The assigned keywords make that happen; Apple does not say the promotional text does.

A hypothetical habit tracker writes "Habit tracker, streak counter, routine planner, daily goals" as promotional text, hoping to rank for those terms. Apple says that text does not affect search. The same four phrases in the keyword field take 56 bytes of the 100, in a field Apple does index.

Put the terms where Apple indexes them, using the keyword field guide, and verify the list with the keyword field checker.