App Store Keywords for Lifestyle Apps: A Catch-All Category, Measured

Estimated volume / estimated difficulty (0-100), English phrases in all six storefronts.

The grid reads as three tiers. "Dating" is the head term, with difficulty of 40 to 93 in every storefront. "Home design" and "pregnancy" are mid-tier, averaging 44.0 and 39.7. "Pet care" and "wedding planner" are small niches with weak demand outside the US and GB. "Astrology" is an interesting case: difficulty 57 in the US but 0 in Japan and 11 in France, where the same English word competes with local terms the test did not use.

Mean volume and difficulty are near the median, so the interest here is in distribution and wording. The US exact-title share of 85% and Great Britain's 80% are the first and joint-second highest category-and-storefront values in the study. By the German, Brazilian and French columns the share falls to 53%, 33% and 38%. English-speaking storefronts reward a literal English name much more visibly than the others, but remember that the phrases in this test are English, so the others are measuring English phrases against local names.

Because Lifestyle is a catch-all, 56.7% of US results had the right genre and the rest came from elsewhere: Medical 15.0% and Games 11.7%. The mapping is approximate throughout, and it is at its loosest in a category like this.

• Say it plainly in English-speaking storefronts. If you target the US or GB, a name that states the function matches how the visible apps are named. This is a pattern, not a proven cause. The guide on keyword gaps against competitors shows how to check your own competitors.
• Pick the audience, not the umbrella. "Lifestyle" is a category, not a user need. Phrases such as "wedding planner" and "pet care" are specific, cheap and small; "dating" is huge and crowded. Start from the person you are building for.
• Choose the category with care. Apple's Guideline 2.3.5 asks for the most appropriate category, and a Lifestyle app can also set an optional secondary category. See choosing primary and secondary category before deciding which vocabulary to put first.
• Look at the neighbours. Matchmaking and community features overlap with Social Networking, pregnancy and symptom terms with Medical, and registry or gift terms with Shopping.

The study ran six generic English phrases per category through the iTunes Search API (entity=software, limit=25) in the US, GB, DE, JP, FR and BR and analysed the top 10 results per query: 36 queries and 360 slots for Lifestyle, fetched 2026-11-01. Read 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, each in its local language. A license is $29 once; the free download needs a license key to run. See pricing.