Spy on Competitors' App Store Keywords (and Find Gaps)

Why Competitor Analysis Is the Fastest Way to Find Keywords

You could spend hours brainstorming keywords, testing autocomplete suggestions, and guessing what users search for. Or you could look at what's already working for apps similar to yours.

Competitor keyword analysis shortcuts the entire discovery process. If a competing app ranks in the top 10 for a keyword, that keyword has proven demand. If you don't rank for it and your app is relevant, that's a gap worth closing.

Step 1: Choose the Right Competitors

Not every app in your category is a useful competitor to analyze. You want apps that are:

Similar in function — they solve roughly the same problem yours does. A budget tracker and an investment portfolio app are in the same category but serve different search intents.

Similar in scale (or slightly larger) — analyzing apps with 10 million downloads when you have 500 won't surface achievable keywords. Look at apps 2-10x your size for the most actionable data.

Actively maintained — an app that hasn't been updated in 2 years might rank for legacy keywords that are no longer representative of current search behavior.

Pick 3-5 competitors that meet these criteria. More than 5 creates noise without proportional insight.

Step 2: Extract Their Keyword Footprint

For each competitor, you want to know every keyword they appear in search results for. There are two approaches:

The Manual Approach (Free)

1. Read their metadata. Look at the competitor's title, subtitle, and description. Every word in their title and subtitle is a keyword they're targeting.

1. Search for those keywords. Go to the App Store or Google Play, search for each keyword you extracted, and note the competitor's rank. If they rank in the top 10, the keyword is relevant.

1. Check autocomplete. Type the competitor's name in the search bar. The autocomplete suggestions that appear alongside it (e.g., "CompetitorApp alternatives," "CompetitorApp vs") reveal what users associate with that app.

1. Look at their "Similar Apps" section. The apps listed as similar share keyword overlap. Check their metadata too.

This works but is time-consuming for more than a handful of keywords.

The Tool-Assisted Approach

ASO tools (including ours) automate this by:

1. Taking a competitor's app ID as input
2. Running searches for thousands of keywords
3. Recording which keywords the competitor appears in results for
4. Scoring each keyword by volume and difficulty

This gives you a complete keyword footprint in minutes instead of hours.

Step 3: Identify Keyword Gaps

A keyword gap is a keyword that a competitor ranks for but you don't. This is the most valuable output of competitor analysis.

Organize gaps into three buckets:

Quick Wins

• Your competitor ranks in the top 10
• You don't rank at all (or rank 50+)
• Difficulty is below 35
• The keyword is relevant to your app

These are low competition keywords you can likely start ranking for just by adding them to your metadata. Check keyword difficulty pages like goal tracker or kanban board to verify competition levels before committing metadata space. If the competitor ranks with a description mention and you add it to your keyword field, you may outrank them quickly.

Stretch Goals

• Multiple competitors rank in the top 10
• Difficulty is 35-55
• Volume is medium or higher (SP 40+)

These require more effort — you'll need the keyword in your title or subtitle and solid ratings/reviews to compete. Worth targeting if the volume justifies it.

Monitor Only

• Difficulty is above 55
• Or the keyword has borderline relevance to your app

Track these for changes in difficulty but don't invest metadata space in them right now.

Prioritizing Gap Keywords With an Opportunity Score

Once you have a list of gap keywords, you need a way to rank them against each other. Not all gaps are equally worth pursuing. A simple opportunity score formula handles this:

Opportunity Score = (Search Popularity / Difficulty) x Relevance Multiplier

• Search Popularity is the keyword's SP score (5-100 on iOS, or estimated equivalent on Android)
• Difficulty is the keyword difficulty score (1-100)
• Relevance Multiplier is a manual rating you assign: 1.0 for exact-match features, 0.7 for adjacent features, 0.4 for loosely related terms

A keyword with SP 45 and difficulty 15 scores 3.0 with full relevance — that's an excellent opportunity. A keyword with SP 60 and difficulty 50 scores 1.2 — the volume is better but the difficulty makes it harder to capture.

Sort your gap keywords by opportunity score, then work down the list. This prevents the common mistake of chasing high-volume keywords that are too competitive, or wasting metadata on easy keywords nobody searches for.

For indie apps with fewer than 1,000 reviews, focus on keywords with opportunity scores above 1.5. Below that threshold, the effort-to-reward ratio drops significantly unless the keyword is a perfect relevance match.

Step 4: Analyze Competitor Metadata Strategy

Beyond just finding their keywords, understand how competitors use them:

Title keywords — what keyword did they choose for their most valuable real estate? This tells you what they consider their highest-opportunity term.

Subtitle keywords — what's their secondary focus? Are they targeting a different user intent (e.g., title targets "meditation app" while subtitle targets "sleep sounds")?

Description keyword density (Google Play) — which keywords appear most frequently in their description? Higher density = higher priority in their strategy.

Keyword field (iOS) — you can't see this directly (see our metadata optimization guide for how to use it), but you can infer it. If a competitor ranks for a keyword that doesn't appear in their visible title, subtitle, or description, it's almost certainly in their keyword field.

Step 5: Build Your Keyword Strategy From Gaps

Take your gap analysis and use it to prioritize your metadata updates:

1. Title change — if the highest-opportunity gap keyword is better than your current title keyword, consider swapping. This is the biggest lever but also the most visible change.

1. Subtitle update — incorporate the next best gap keyword here.

1. Keyword field refresh (iOS) — add all quick-win gap keywords. Remove any keywords you currently target that have zero ranking movement after 2+ months.

1. Description rewrite (Google Play) — weave gap keywords into your description naturally. Don't force them — write useful feature descriptions that happen to include the target terms.

Real-World Example

Say you have a habit tracking app and you analyze three competitors. Here's what the gap analysis might reveal:

The clear quick wins are "daily routine" (difficulty 28, you're not ranking) and "streak counter" (difficulty 19, you're not ranking). Adding these to your keyword field or subtitle could generate rankings within a week.

"Self improvement" is a stretch goal — medium difficulty, good volume, but you'll need it in a prominent metadata position.

"Habit tracker" you already rank for — this is about defending, not gaining. "Goal setting" is worth monitoring but probably requires more reviews to move from #22 to top 10.

Competitive Keyword Strategies by App Category

Competitor analysis looks different depending on your category. Here's how to adjust your approach for three common app types:

Utility Apps (Calculators, Scanners, Converters)

Utility categories are crowded with near-identical apps. The gap keywords that matter most are long-tail feature descriptors, not broad category terms. "Calculator" has a difficulty north of 80. But "tip calculator split bill" might sit at 22.

Focus your competitor analysis on metadata combinations — what two-word and three-word phrases do top competitors use? Their subtitle and keyword field choices reveal the long-tail terms that actually drive installs at the indie scale. If three competitors all rank for "unit converter offline," that phrase has search intent you should capture.

Health and Fitness Apps

This category has a wide spread of search intents. A competitor analysis for a workout app should separate competitors by sub-niche: bodyweight exercises, gym logging, running, yoga. Analyze one competitor from each adjacent sub-niche, not just direct competitors.

The gap keywords you find across sub-niches often reveal cross-selling opportunities. If yoga apps rank for "morning routine" and your stretching app doesn't, that keyword bridges both audiences with minimal metadata effort.

Productivity Apps

Productivity has the most metadata-savvy competitors. Many top apps run regular A/B tests on titles and subtitles, which means their keyword choices reflect data, not guesswork.

Track competitor metadata changes over time. If a to-do list app changed its subtitle from "Task Manager & Planner" to "Daily Planner & Checklist" last month, they likely tested both and the new version won. That tells you "daily planner" and "checklist" have better conversion or search volume than "task manager" — data you'd otherwise need your own A/B test to learn.

Multi-Competitor Overlap Analysis

When you analyze 3-5 competitors, pay attention to keyword overlap patterns across the set:

Keywords all competitors rank for — these are table-stakes terms. You need to rank for them to be considered in the same category, but they tend to be high difficulty. Don't expect to crack the top 5 on these without significant review volume. Instead, ensure you rank somewhere (even position 30-50) so the algorithm associates your app with the category.

Keywords only one competitor ranks for — these are the most interesting. Either that competitor found a niche angle nobody else has exploited, or the keyword is a fluke ranking. Check if the keyword appears in their metadata. If it does, they're targeting it intentionally and you've found a potential gap nobody else has noticed. If it doesn't appear anywhere in their listing, the ranking may be unstable and not worth chasing.

Keywords 2 out of 5 competitors rank for — the sweet spot. These have enough validation to prove demand but aren't yet saturated. Prioritize these in your gap analysis, especially when difficulty is below 40.

Common Mistakes in Competitor Keyword Analysis

Copying competitor metadata verbatim. If you use the same title structure and subtitle as a competitor, you're splitting the same search traffic instead of capturing new traffic. Use their keywords but in different combinations.

Ignoring localized competitors. If your app is available in Germany, analyze German App Store competitors — not just the US ones. Local competitors often rank for translated keywords you'd never find from English-language analysis alone.

Analyzing too infrequently. The keyword landscape shifts every time a competitor updates their metadata, which top apps do every 4-6 weeks. If you only run competitor analysis once and never revisit, your gap data goes stale within two months.

Treating all gaps as equal. A keyword gap only matters if your app genuinely serves that search intent. Ranking for an irrelevant keyword might generate impressions but will tank your conversion rate, which hurts your rankings across all keywords.

Cross-Store Competitor Analysis

If your app is on both iOS and Google Play, compare competitor keyword performance across stores. Our iOS vs Google Play ASO guide covers the key differences. Frequently:

• A keyword that's highly competitive on iOS is less competitive on Android (or vice versa)
• Competitors optimize differently per store, creating platform-specific gaps
• Install count data on Google Play (which is public) helps calibrate iOS difficulty estimates

Run separate analyses for each store. Your metadata strategy should differ between platforms because the competitive landscape differs.

How Often to Run Competitor Analysis

• Full analysis (new competitor set, complete keyword extraction): every 3 months
• Gap refresh (re-check rankings for known gap keywords): monthly
• Metadata response (update your keywords based on findings): every 4-6 weeks

The keyword landscape shifts constantly. New apps launch, existing apps update metadata, search trends evolve. Quarterly competitor analysis catches these shifts before you fall behind.

Key Takeaways

• Competitor keyword analysis is the fastest way to find proven, high-value keywords
• Pick 3-5 competitors similar in function and scale to your app
• Classify gap keywords as quick wins, stretch goals, or monitor only
• Use an opportunity score (SP / Difficulty x Relevance) to rank gap keywords against each other
• Quick wins (low difficulty, not currently ranking) can often be captured with a metadata update alone — explore examples like water reminder or bill splitter
• Analyze keyword overlap patterns across your competitor set to find validated but unsaturated terms
• Run competitor analysis quarterly and refresh gap data monthly
• Analyze each store separately — competitive landscapes differ between iOS and Google Play