How to Find Your Competitors' App Store Keywords

Apple states an app is searchable by name, subtitle, keywords and company name (Apple: App Store search). Name and subtitle show on the product page. The keyword field does not. So a competitor's visible words are a floor, and their ranks for other phrases hint at what the hidden field contains.

Pick 3 to 5 apps that appear in the top 10 for your most important phrases, not the biggest apps in your category. Apps your size teach more than apps with millions of ratings. If you have no list yet, search your five best phrases and note which apps repeat.

For each competitor, write down the words in name and subtitle in every language you target. Look at the first lines of the description and the recent What's New text. Name and subtitle words are searchable; the description shows how the app positions itself. Apple advises against stuffing the description, so do not expect it to be a keyword list.

Search each phrase from your candidate list and see which competitor shows up near the top. If a competitor ranks for a phrase that appears nowhere in their visible text, the phrase is probably in their keyword field. That is an inference, not proof, since ranking also depends on ratings and downloads (Apple).

Make a short table for one country:

The hypothetical numbers show the reading: where a competitor ranks and you do not, you have a gap; see choosing keywords you can rank for to decide which gaps to close. Add phrases where two competitors rank and the top 10 is mixed.

Apple's keyword list may not contain names of other apps or companies, and unauthorized trademarks and competing app names are prohibited. See competitor names in keywords. Learn their phrasing, then write your own metadata in your own words so that it matches your app.

Aim for 20 to 40 phrases from the whole exercise, not hundreds. Each phrase should have a reason you can say in one sentence: which competitor ranks for it, which of your fields could hold it and what the top 10 looks like. Phrases without that sentence are noise and will eat bytes later.

• Ranks change by country, so check each one you target.
• A competitor may rank because of ratings, not text, which makes a phrase look more reachable than it is.
• Their metadata may change without notice. Repeat quarterly, not once.

Add competitors by name, link or ID next to your own app. The board then shows, for every keyword, which apps rank ahead of yours with their review counts, and keeps daily rank history on your Mac. Rankings and volume are estimates from public search results, not Apple counts. With the MCP server, your own AI tools can call competitors_get to list the apps ahead of you. See how to add an app, the keyword research docs and the MCP server docs. For the general process, read the keyword research guide.