Should You Use Your Category Name in Your Keywords?

Apple lists text relevance as matches for the title, subtitle, keywords and primary category (Apple: App Store search). In its keyword guidance, Apple says to avoid, to save space, names of categories and the word "app" (Apple: product page). Together they mean the category is already searchable and the keyword field is the wrong place to repeat it.

A hypothetical productivity app has the primary category Productivity. A draft keyword field:

productivity,app,habit,planner,tasks

That is 36 bytes. The same field without the category name and filler:

habit,planner,tasks

That is 19 bytes, and 17 bytes come back. The freed space can hold three or four more words from your research. Count with the keyword field checker.

The rule is about repeating the category itself. Words people use for the type of app but that are not the category name can still be good. A "Health & Fitness" app may not be searched by that exact label, but "workout log" or "step counter" are real searches that the category name does not contain. Check each candidate: if it is not a word in the category name, run it through the normal tests for choosing keywords you can rank for.

The category matters for search and for browsing. Apple lists 27 categories, an app can have a primary and a secondary, and the primary determines where the app appears when browsing or filtering results. Guideline 2.3.5 requires the most appropriate category, and Apple may change the category if it is way off base. For macOS apps the category is also set in Xcode and the primary category in App Store Connect should match it. For choices by category, see the primary category glossary entry.

Because the secondary category is also indexed, use it as a second set of searchable words. Pick one that truly fits, not the one with a less crowded list. The secondary category glossary entry has the details.

1. Open your keyword field and list the words that appear in your category names.
2. Remove them.
3. Record your rank for a phrase that contains the category word before the change, then after.
4. Compare with a control keyword for a week.

If your rank holds, the category carried it. If it drops, restore the word and report the result in your log. See how long keyword changes take.

The primary category also decides where the app appears when people browse or filter results. That is a second reason to choose it carefully rather than for keyword reasons: a category chosen for a search trick can put the app among the wrong neighbors. Pick the category that fits first, then build the keyword field around it.

Optimize covers the keyword field per language, and the free packer fills spare bytes from your candidate list. See the Optimize docs and what to put in the keyword field.