LocalASOCategory guide
App Store Keywords for Magazines & Newspapers Apps: Phrases That Land in Other Categories
The search phrases people associate with Magazines & Newspapers mostly return apps from other categories. Measured on 2026-11-01 via Apple's iTunes Search API, only 8.3% of the top-10 results in the US for six magazine and newspaper phrases had Magazines & Newspapers as primary genre; 55.0% were News apps and 16.7% were Games. The phrases themselves are comparatively easy, with a mean estimated difficulty of 22.0 (21st of 26). Scores are estimates from rating counts, not Apple search counts.
Updated
Phrase table
Estimated volume / estimated difficulty (0-100), English phrases in all six storefronts.
| Phrase | US | GB | DE | JP | FR | BR | Mean |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| magazine | 59 / 35 | 37 / 28 | 52 / 32 | 34 / 14 | 57 / 40 | 74 / 72 | 52.2 / 36.8 |
| newspaper | 40 / 29 | 64 / 45 | 50 / 30 | 37 / 19 | 51 / 30 | 38 / 19 | 46.7 / 28.7 |
| digital magazine | 28 / 8 | 18 / 0 | 27 / 11 | 3 / 0 | 12 / 0 | 16 / 4 | 17.3 / 3.8 |
| news reader | 34 / 25 | 43 / 21 | 31 / 13 | 37 / 25 | 38 / 27 | 23 / 5 | 34.3 / 19.3 |
| crossword | 78 / 74 | 60 / 44 | 46 / 35 | 32 / 16 | 57 / 42 | 44 / 23 | 52.8 / 39.0 |
| rss reader | 30 / 11 | 12 / 0 | 24 / 9 | 17 / 0 | 19 / 5 | 13 / 0 | 19.2 / 4.2 |
The row for "magazine" has one surprise: Brazil scores 74 / 72, above the US reading of 59 / 35 on both scales. It is a reminder that a one-word English term can be shared by very different kinds of apps: in a storefront where the word is used by large, locally popular products, the whole row moves. "Crossword" is a game by any normal reading, and its numbers (US 78 / 74) resemble Games, not reading apps.
How the category looks
| Measure | Magazines & Newspapers | 26-category median |
|---|---|---|
| Median rating count, top-10 apps | 1,323 | about 2,690 |
| Top-10 apps with 50,000 or more ratings | 12% | 19.5% |
| Names containing every query word | 48% | 43.5% |
| Mean app name length (characters) | 24.0 | 23.5 |
| Mean volume / mean difficulty | 37.1 / 22.0 | 44.5 / 30.3 |
| US results with the category as primary genre | 8.3% | 68.6% (US, all categories) |
The genre match is the lowest in the study apart from Kids (which has no genre filter in the API). The study's phrase-to-category mapping is approximate by design, and this is the category where that approximation matters most. Read the other numbers in light of it: the top 10 for "newspaper" or "news reader" is largely a News competition, and the top 10 for "crossword" is a Games competition. If your product is a magazine or newspaper app, your direct competitors may be few; your search competitors are not.
What to do with that
- Pick the category you are, then the vocabulary. Apple's Guideline 2.3.5 requires the most appropriate category, and the primary category determines where the app appears when browsing. If your app is a publisher's reader, Magazines & Newspapers is the honest choice, and you can still use the secondary slot for a neighbour. See choosing primary and secondary category.
- Skip the label in the keyword field. "Magazine" and "newspaper" are words in the category's name, which Apple advises against repeating; test them in the name instead. Category names in keywords covers the check.
- Use the cheap, specific phrases. "Digital magazine" (3.8) and "rss reader" (4.2) are almost free in difficulty, and a volume of 17 to 19 is small but not zero. They fit apps that say what format they deliver.
- Know your neighbours. Reading-style apps overlap with News and with Books; puzzle sections overlap with Games.
How we measured
We selected 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, then analysed the top 10 results: 36 queries and 360 slots for this category, fetched on 2026-11-01. Details: research methodology, the research hub and how we measure. Data: category CSV.
In LocalASO
LocalASO is a Mac app that estimates keyword volume and difficulty in 52 storefronts in each storefront's local language. A license is $29 one time, and the download is free but the app needs a license key to run. See pricing.
Sources
- localaso.com/data/app-store-s2-by-category.csv (checked November 1, 2026)
- Apple: developer.apple.com/app-store/categories (checked November 1, 2026)
- Apple: developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#accurate-metadata (checked November 1, 2026)
- Apple: developer.apple.com/app-store/search (checked November 1, 2026)
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