Improving downloads of an old app: an ASO audit of a stale listing

You have an app that shipped a long time ago, still earns something, and has a listing written under different rules, a different category landscape or a different feature set.

• Unknown state. You do not remember which keywords you targeted or whether they still work.
• Dead terms taking space. A keyword with almost no searches uses bytes in the 100-byte field.
• Competitors changed. New apps with many ratings may now hold terms you once led.
• Old rating baggage. Ratings and reviews can influence how an app ranks in search. When you release a new version, the overview rating can be reset; decide on purpose, because resetting throws away a rating you may have earned.
• Text drifted from the product. Description and What's New no longer match the app.

1. Add the app. To see the real keyword field and all localizations, connect an App Store Connect key; without it LocalASO derives keywords from the public listing.
2. Read the board and filter by verdict. Swap and Dead keywords free space. Push keywords are your quickest wins.
3. Check the Losing to list on your Push keywords. If the apps ahead have far more ratings, plan a smaller change; if only a few apps beat you, it is a target.
4. Add rivals that appeared since your last update as Competitor and re-check their ranks.
5. In Optimize, generate a proposal per language. The prompts stick to your real listing and do not invent features, which matters for text that has drifted. Review each word diff.
6. Ship the update. Apple notes it can take up to 24 hours for changes to appear, so re-check ranks after that, then weekly. The keyword research guide explains how to read movement.

Do not add unnecessary keywords to the description in the hope of better search; Apple advises against it. See does the app description affect search.

• No history from before you started. Rank history begins when you add keywords, so you cannot see last year's rank.
• No download or revenue history. That is in App Store Connect.
• No review or rating management.
• Estimates, not Apple counts.

Change the field with the least risk first: the keyword field. It is invisible to customers, so a swap of dead terms for Push terms costs little. Then update the subtitle if it no longer describes the app, and the promotional text if it is stale. Leave the name for last, since a new name affects branding as well as search. After each release, give the store a day, read the board, and decide whether to continue.

Run the audit on one language and one country first. Download LocalASO or see pricing. Related: the AI-agent workflow and privacy-first teams.