How to Spot and Remove App Store Keywords That Don't Work

Apple does not publish search counts, so every tool estimates. LocalASO's volume is a rank-weighted mean of log rating counts over the top 10 results, scaled to 0-100, plus up to 5 points for result count; it is an estimate, not an Apple number. If the top 10 results are all tiny apps and the volume is very low, the phrase is probably not searched. LocalASO labels that Dead. If you rank in the top 10 for such a phrase, it labels it Swap: you win a race nobody runs.

A phrase can have volume and still be wrong. Search it and read the top 10. If the apps are a different kind from yours, the people who type it want something else, and a high rank would not convert. Apple's search factors include user behavior such as downloads and ratings (Apple: App Store search), so a mismatch also works against you over time. Remove it.

If the phrase has volume and relevance, ask whether your rank can change. A phrase where the top 10 are apps with hundreds of thousands of ratings and you sit at 150 is Hard (difficulty 80 or more and no top 10 rank in LocalASO). Hard is not dead. Keep one or two for the long run, but do not give it your best slot. A phrase where you rank 4 to 20 with solid volume is Push: keep it and work on it.

A hypothetical habit tracker, Streakly, audits this keyword field:

streak,checklist,reminder,self care,planner,journal,morning,mood,sleep,water

It is 76 bytes. The audit finds sleep and water return sleep trackers and water-reminder apps, a different audience, and mood has a weak top 10 with no volume. Removing those three leaves streak,checklist,reminder,self care,planner,journal,morning at 59 bytes, which frees 17 bytes of the 100-byte limit for two better candidates. The keyword field checker counts the bytes.

1. Remove the dead words from the end of the list, starting with the weakest.
2. Add candidates from your research, strongest first. See finding long-tail keywords for sources.
3. Apple says changes may take up to 24 hours to appear (Apple: view and edit app information).
4. Recheck rank daily for a week. Compare with the control keywords you did not touch. The rank tracking guide describes the routine.

Do not remove a keyword just because its rank is poor on day three, and do not keep one because you ranked first for it once. Seasonal phrases may look dead off season. Note the season before you delete.

Every keyword on the board gets a Swap, Dead, Hard, Push or Maybe verdict per market, checked in that order. See the keyword research docs and Suggestions, which proposes keywords to remove or swap, each with a reason. For the way volume and difficulty are built, read the search volume guide.