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App Keyword Difficulty: What It Measures and How to Use It
App keyword difficulty measures how hard it is to get your app into the top 10 results for a search phrase. It is high when the apps already ranking there are large and well established, and low when the top results are small apps or loose matches. In Wow Keywords, Difficulty is a 0–100 score per phrase and per country, on the App Store and Google Play.
Why the top 10 decides difficulty
Most installs from a search go to the first few results. A phrase where you would sit at position 40 brings almost nothing, however popular it is. So the useful question is not "how many people search this?" but "can my app get onto the first screen for it?"
That depends on who is already there. On the App Store, the clearest public sign of an established app is its number of ratings: an app with hundreds of thousands of ratings has years of installs, reviews and conversion history behind it. On Google Play, install counts play the same role. When the top 10 for a phrase are all apps of that size, a new or small app has little chance of displacing them. When the top 10 include apps with a few dozen ratings, or apps that only partly match the phrase, there is room.
Difficulty turns that picture into one number, so you can compare candidates without opening every search result.
What makes a keyword hard or easy
- Hard: short, generic phrases such as "water tracker" or "fitness". Big brands target them, and the top results are household names with huge rating counts.
- Moderate: a generic phrase plus a qualifier, such as "water reminder for work". Some large apps still rank, but smaller apps appear too.
- Easy: specific long-tail phrases such as "hourly water reminder widget", or phrases in a market where few apps have localized their listing. The top 10 are thinner, or match the phrase only partly.
Difficulty also varies by country. The same idea can be crowded in the United States and wide open in Germany or Brazil, because local apps differ and fewer competitors translate their keywords well. That is why Wow Keywords scores the local phrase in each market separately instead of reusing the English score.
Difficulty and Volume together
Difficulty only matters next to demand. A phrase nobody searches is easy and worthless; a phrase everybody searches may be out of reach.
Wow Keywords pairs Difficulty with Volume, a 0–100 estimate of the audience behind a phrase. Volume is not Apple's or Google's search count. It is estimated from the apps that match the phrase, so read it as a way to compare phrases, not as a number of searches.
Read the two scores together:
| Volume | Difficulty | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| High | Low | Best targets. Put them in your name, subtitle or keyword field first. |
| High | High | Long-term goals. Keep them if they describe your app, but do not build the listing around them yet. |
| Low | Low | Useful supporting phrases. They add small, reachable traffic. |
| Low | High | Drop them. |
On the board, green cells mark phrases with real volume that you can compete for, so you can scan a market at a glance.
How to choose keywords by difficulty
- Start with relevance. List phrases that describe what your app does. An easy phrase that brings the wrong people only takes space a better phrase could use.
- Check each phrase in each market. Add the phrases, localize them for the countries you sell in, and compare Volume and Difficulty per country.
- Look at the top apps. Open the results for a phrase and see who you would have to pass. If they solve the same task as your app with far more ratings, the phrase is a long-term target.
- Prefer reachable demand. Pick phrases with useful Volume and a Difficulty your app can realistically beat today. As your ratings grow, harder phrases come into range.
- Track your rank. After a listing update, watch your positions for the chosen phrases. If you reach the top 10 on easier phrases, move up to harder ones.
The free keyword checker shows Volume, Difficulty and the top apps for any phrase across countries, for both stores. For the full workflow, read the App Store keyword research guide, and see how to assess search volume for the demand side.
FAQ
What is a good keyword difficulty score?
It depends on your app's size. A new app with few ratings should favor phrases at the low end of the scale; an app with thousands of ratings can compete for harder ones. Compare scores across your candidates rather than aiming at a fixed number.
Should I avoid high-difficulty keywords?
Not always. Keep a hard phrase in your keyword field if it describes your app precisely, since that costs little space. Just don't spend your app name or subtitle on it while easier phrases with real demand are available.
Is keyword difficulty the same on the App Store and Google Play?
No. Each store has its own results and its own established apps, so the same phrase can score differently. Wow Keywords scores each store separately.
Why does the same keyword have different difficulty in different countries?
Each country has its own top 10. A phrase dominated by large apps in the United States may show smaller local apps in another market, especially where few competitors localized their listing.