App Store Keywords for Business Apps: Low Difficulty Outside the US

Estimated volume / estimated difficulty on a 0-100 scale. All phrases are English, including in DE, JP, FR and BR.

The "accounting" row deserves a caution. Volume of 3 and difficulty of 0 in four storefronts does not mean opportunity: it may only mean that few apps match the English phrase there, while people search in German, Japanese, French or Portuguese. The score describes the English phrase only. For those markets, the comparison that matters is with the local phrase, which this test did not run; see translate or transcreate keywords.

In the US, the Business rows had a median of 7,371 ratings per top-10 app; in Japan 121, in France 224. That gap, from about 7 times (Great Britain) to 60 times (Japan), explains the split in difficulty above. Only 55.0% of US results had Business as primary genre, with Finance at 16.7% and Productivity at 15.0%, so these phrases are shared with Finance and Productivity. Our category mapping is approximate throughout.

• Look for quick wins in the long tail. Many Business phrases have low difficulty, so the work is deciding which ones have real demand. Use the volume score as a rough filter, then read quick-win keywords for how to rank candidates.
• Pick the market on purpose. If your customer base is in the UK, Germany or France, these measurements say competition for English business phrases is light. If you target the US, plan for the 35.8 average and the 47 to 50 range for expense and project terms.
• Remember the narrow pool of search text. Exact-title share is 35%, below the median, which hints that many top apps do not spell the whole phrase out. That is correlation only; check your own competitors before you remove a word from your name.
• Use both category slots. Apple lets an app have a primary and a secondary category, and a tool that spans accounting and planning can cover two vocabularies. See Education for another low-competition category where vocabulary is the main lever.

We picked six generic English phrases per category and queried the iTunes Search API (entity=software, limit=25) in the US, GB, DE, JP, FR and BR, taking the top 10 results per query: 36 queries and 360 app slots for Business, 936 queries overall. See the research methodology, the research hub and how we measure. Data: category CSV.

LocalASO is a Mac app that estimates volume and difficulty in 52 storefronts, using each storefront's local language. It is a $29 one-time purchase and the free download needs a license key to run. See pricing.