App Store Optimization

Your app's App Store and Google Play listing, rewritten from what the stores show today – recommendations in the order to do them, three options per store and market measured against each store's limits, and where the app shows before and after.

Open it from Studios → Content Marketing → App Store Optimization.

Set it up

The left side holds your choices; the right side shows the app as the stores show it today, read as you type.

The app. Paste the App Store link (or the number after "id" in it), the Google Play link (or the package name, like com.example.app), or both. Apps saved for the brand are listed under Saved for this brand – click one to use it. Every app you read or write for is saved to the brand, so next time it is already filled in. The list is kept in Brand → Profile, where you can add an app, remove one or pick the one used by default.

Markets. Each market is a country and the language of its listing. The first one comes from your brand's currency and language, or from the storefront in an App Store link (apps.apple.com/gb/… is the United Kingdom); change it at any time. Add a market for more. Each store is written for in each market, up to 4 listings a run – with both stores, 2 markets. A language only one store reads in that country says which one beside its name.

What it should be found for. The Searches people type in the store, comma-separated, up to 20. When your markets have more than one language, each language gets its own field (English searches, German searches), because a German listing is found for what people type in German – each listing is written and measured for its own language's searches. The stores publish no search volume; where the app shows for each search is read instead.

Keep in mind (optional) is anything to lead with or avoid: a feature, a word, a release coming up.

Start from. The store alone writes from the store listing and its searches. A saved strategy lets the strategy's positioning and audiences steer the angles; the facts still come from the store. Assign to a strategy (optional) files the result under a strategy in your library. The options do not change.

Write three options (15 credits) writes and saves them to your library. Nothing changes in the stores. It shows three steps as it goes: reading the listing, the searches and the apps around it (up to a minute when the stores are read fresh; from the day's copy when they were read earlier today), writing three options for each listing, and measuring them against each store's limits and rules. The result opens on the Listing tab.

What it reads first

As soon as there is an app and a market, the stores are read – free, no credits – and the right side shows Today on the App Store (or Google Play):

• Where it stands, in one line – its best position, like #4 for "budget planner" on the App Store in the United Kingdom, and for how many of your searches it is not in the first results.
• The listing today – the store's search result as it looks, and every field against the store's limit. The App Store keeps the keyword field and the promotional text private: without App Store Connect connected they show as Private – only App Store Connect shows it, never as empty. Beside it, which of your searches the listing carries in the fields the store searches, and what the rules find.
• Where it shows – your app and the apps around it for each search (see below), and any search demand the stores have a source for.
• The apps around it – up to 5 per store, with their ratings and what their listings say.

A read that fails is named under Not read, with Read again. Nothing can be written until the store returns the listing. The free reads are counted per brand each day; when a brand has used today's, the page says so. They free up as the oldest pass 24 hours, and writing the options still reads what it needs.

Recommendations and what we found

The Listing tab opens with the read – a short summary of what the stores show – and the facts it stands on: the app, the markets, the searches, where demand came from and how many reviews were read. Anything that could not be read is named under Not read.

Recommendations, in the order to do them. Each one names what to change and where ("App Store · United Kingdom · Name"). When the change is a field, the exact new text is there to Copy, with its length against the store's limit. When the change is a reply to store reviews, the reply itself is there to Copy too, counted against Google Play's 350 characters – a person posts it, from the Helpdesk or the store's own console; nothing is sent to a store for you. Below it is why, and See option 1 jumps to the option that carries it. Every figure in a recommendation must trace back to something that was read – a position, a rating, a review count, a demand figure, a store limit – or the recommendation is left out, and the page says how many were. There is no score, and no predicted ranking or download count.

What we found lists what the read shows, written from the data itself: where the app ranks in each store and market, how many of your searches today's listing carries and which it misses, the store rules today's listing breaks, the searches with the most demand (with their source) and where the app stands on them, its rating beside the apps around it, how the newest reviews split between 1 and 5 stars, what reviewers keep saying, and which app leads a search. The recommendations cite these.

The three options

With more than one listing, pick the store and market above Today. Each option is a whole listing written from a different angle:

• App Store: Name (30 characters), Subtitle (30), Keyword field (100 bytes), Promotional text (170) and Description (4,000).
• Google Play: App name (30 characters), Short description (80) and Full description (4,000).

The keyword field is measured in bytes, the way Apple counts it: 100 letters in English, about a third of that in Chinese, Japanese or Korean. The long description is written once, in option 01; options 02 and 03 say Same description as option 01.

Each option shows as a store search result, then every field with its length against the limit and a Copy button (Copy all takes the whole option). Beside it:

• Which searches it carries in the fields the store searches – the name, subtitle and keyword field on the App Store; the app name and both descriptions on Google Play – and which it does not.
• What the rules find. On the App Store: another app's name, a price, or a claim Apple can reject as unverifiable in the name or subtitle, and the keyword field's hygiene – spaces after the commas, repeated words, words already in the name or subtitle, singular and plural of one word. On Google Play: emoji, capitals, prices, store-performance claims and Play program terms in the app name, and keyword lists, heavy repetition or unattributed testimonials in the full description.
• Your brand's rules. An option that breaks one of your own rules says so as something to change before it goes to the store; the option is kept, and you decide. Your industry's advisories show as advice, never as a block.

An option that breaks a store limit, is empty where the store requires text, or repeats another option is left out before you see it, and the page says how many were. Other apps' names are kept out of the options: both stores reject them. Pick the one to use with Use this one.

Where the app shows

One grid per store and market: your app first, then the apps around it, one column per search. A cell is the position (#3), – when the app was not in the results read, or behind when that app is known to sit below yours. Positions are read for the first 10 searches of each listing, from each store's own search in that country and language, on the day shown under the grid.

A phone can order results differently, and ratings, installs and the stores' own changes move positions too – the listing is one cause among them.

Demand

Neither store publishes search volume. A demand figure appears only with its source and its market, and each source gets its own table with its own scale – two scales are never mixed. For each store and market, the strongest source there is:

1. Apple Ads search popularity (0–100) when Apple Ads is connected – for the App Store, per country where Apple gives it, otherwise for the App Store as a whole, labelled that way. Store visitors from each search, from your Play Console reports across all countries, when Google Play is connected with its reports – for Google Play and your own app.
2. An estimate of monthly store searches, for the United States in English only and labelled that way: your own searches first, then related searches made only of words your listing or your searches already use – never another app's name – up to 15 per store. It is never carried to another country.
3. Google web searches for the listing's country and language, labelled as interest on the web, not App Store or Google Play searches. The free read leaves these out and says so; writing the options reads them.

Otherwise the page says Neither store publishes search volume.

Reviews and screenshots

What reviewers say reads the 25 most recent App Store reviews and the 150 newest Google Play reviews, in each store's first market: how many gave each star, then up to six themes that keep coming back, each with how many reviews cite it, quotes in the reviewers' own words and what it means for the listing.

Screenshots shows the app's screenshots as the store shows them today – the first 8, in the store's order – beside the Recommended sequence: the order, one idea and one caption per frame, and the screen it shows. Both stores require screenshots of the real app in use, so none are made here.

Check your own takes your screenshot files – pick the slot (iPhone 6.9", iPhone 6.5", iPad 13" or the app icon on the App Store; phone, 7" or 10" tablet screenshots, the feature graphic or the app icon on Google Play) and Check your screenshots. Each file's pixel size and the number of files are checked against the store's specification on your device; nothing is uploaded. The Google Play feature graphic is art, not a screen: the link makes one at 1024 × 500 in the Image Generator.

What shoppers see first sets your first screenshot beside the first screenshot of the apps around you in the same store – in App Store search, an app's first screenshots show under its name when it has no preview video.

Tests to run names the store experiments worth running – product page optimization tests in App Store Connect, store listing experiments in the Google Play Console. The results stay in those consoles; nothing here predicts a winner.

Take it with you

PDF, Slides and Word under Take it with you turn the whole listing into a report in your brand's colours, with your brand's logo and the apps' icons on the cover. It opens with the recommendations – the summary, the key figures and what to change in order – then what we found, the optimized listings (today beside the recommended option), where the app shows, search demand, the apps around it, what reviewers say, the screenshot plan, tests to run, brand rules and advisories, and how it was measured, with every source. For markets that write British English, the report is titled App Store Optimisation – recommendations for your app.

Send it to the store

Pick an option with Use this one; it is marked This one. Without a store connection, copy the fields into App Store Connect or the Play Console.

With the store connected for the brand (see below), the option you picked offers Send to App Store Connect or Send to Google Play (when the connected account does not cover this app, it says so instead). A dialog names the fields that replace what the listing has now and the ones that stay as they are, and its Send to App Store Connect or Send to Google Play writes them:

• App Store – into the app's version you can still edit. Nothing is submitted for review; you submit from App Store Connect when the release is ready. Where one App Store listing serves several countries (the German listing also serves Austria), the dialog says which listing it writes.
• Google Play – Google reviews the change before it shows in the store, usually within a few days.

The option then says when it was sent. Only a person sends a listing – chat, your AI team and the API never do. A listing can be picked, sent or marked live by the person who wrote it; teammates can read and copy it.

After it goes live

When the new listing is in the store, pick the day it went live and press It's live. The listing then shows Live since that day (Not live after all undoes it) and a before and after:

• Read the positions again reads the stores again for the same searches, once a day, and sets where the app shows now beside where it showed when the listing was written: up, down, the same, now shown or out of view. The stores take a few days to index a new listing, so positions read in the first week can still move. Every Monday, the positions of the brand's newest live listing are also read again on their own.
• The stores' own numbers, with the store connected: on the App Store, impressions, product page views and downloads for the first days live against the same number of days before (up to 28 – App Store Connect's reports arrive a day or two late); on Google Play, with its reports, store listing visitors, installs from the listing and the share of visitors who installed, the month after the change against the month before, and visitors for each of your searches. Seasons, ratings, featuring and paid campaigns move these numbers too; the listing is one cause among them.

Your listings lists everything written for the brand – when, which stores and markets, and whether it is live or picked but not live yet. Before and after opens the same comparison there, and Open opens the listing. The Library opens a listing here too.

In chat and for your AI team

Ask chat to "rewrite our App Store listing for the UK" and it runs the same tool. It uses the app saved for the brand, or asks once for the link and saves it. Before the first run in a conversation it says the price and waits for your yes. Chat shows option 1 of each listing; the whole result opens here. On an open listing, the chat button in the header (Ask about what's on this page) knows it – ask which option you would put live, or what the reviews say to fix first.

Once the brand has an app saved, your AI team can plan listing work too. The SEO Strategist's card lists an app on the App Store or Google Play as optional: with one saved, it works your store listings too. Neither chat nor the team can change a listing, submit a version or reply to a store review: they write options, and a person pastes them in or sends them from this page.

Over the API, the same tool is app-store-optimization.

Connect the stores (optional)

App Store Optimization reads the public stores without any connection. Three optional connections, under App stores on the Integrations page, add what only your own accounts can show:

• App Store Connect – your real listing, including the keyword field and promotional text; App Store analytics for the before and after; your App Store reviews in the Helpdesk; and Send to App Store Connect.
• Google Play – your listing from the Play Console; your Google Play reviews in the Helpdesk; Send to Google Play; and, with the reports bucket, the monthly store reports – visitors and installs, and the searches that bring visitors.
• Apple Ads – Apple's own search popularity for your searches. Read only: no campaign is created or changed.

Each connects with a key checked live with the store before it is saved – see Connecting your data for what each needs.