How to find competitor app keywords

A competitor's keyword field is not public, but you can still find the words that matter: the phrases the app shows up for in App Store search and the wording in its name and subtitle. Collect both for each country, then keep only what fits your app.

What you can see of a competitor's keywords

The keyword field is the one part of a listing that only the developer sees. Nobody else can read it from the App Store, so whatever a tool shows you about it is inferred.

Two things are public. The first is the listing text: name, subtitle, promotional text and description. The second is search itself: for any phrase in any country, the App Store shows which apps come up and in what order.

So "competitor keywords" means observed phrases plus visible wording. That is enough to decide what to add to your own listing.

Find the apps that compete for your phrases

Start from the task your app does, not from a list of rivals. Write the phrases someone would type to find it, search each one in the App Store of every country you target, and note which apps appear near the top. Results differ by country, so repeat the search in each one.

Keep apps that solve the same problem. Drop results that only share a word with your phrase.

Wow Keywords does this from your tracked phrases. In the Audit tab, Main competitors lists the other apps in the top 10 of your tracked phrases, most often first, and leaves out your own apps. Remove an unrelated app with competitor dismissal and the next one takes its place.

Add competitors and see the phrases they rank for

Adding a competitor puts its ranks beside yours. In Wow Keywords, do this:

1. Search for the app by name, or paste its App Store link.
2. Add it as a competitor. It lands in the Research folder.
3. Wait while the app reads its listing in every locale and checks its ranks.
4. Open its Keywords tab to see each phrase with its rank, Volume and Difficulty in every country.

Public tracking needs no App Store Connect key, so you can research any app in the store. In the Audit, Add competitor keeps an app on your Main competitors list by hand, whether or not it ranks for your phrases.

Read their name and subtitle for keyword wording

Visible text shows what a competitor wants to be found for. Read the name and subtitle of each app in the same country and look for:

• the task the app promises, in the words a searcher would use
• features named outright
• local wording in each country, which is often not a translation of the English phrase
• words that repeat across several competitors

A word that appears in most competing subtitles is a sign of how people search. Treat it as a candidate for your own listing, not a rule.

Find phrases where competitors rank and you don't

Gaps are where the opportunity sits. In the Audit, the gaps list shows phrases with demand where your app is outside the top 30, next to the competitors that fill the top 10 for them.

Open a phrase in a country to see the top apps for that search with their names, subtitles and ratings. If the top results all serve the task your app does, the phrase belongs in your research. If they serve something else, skip it.

Volume and Difficulty are 0 to 100 estimates for comparing phrases against each other. They are not monthly searches.

Check each phrase before adding it

Before a competitor's phrase goes into your listing, run it through four checks:

• Relevance: does your app do what a searcher expects from this phrase?
• Results: do the top apps solve the same problem as yours?
• Competition: is Volume high enough and Difficulty low enough that you can realistically reach the top results? App keyword difficulty explains how to weigh the two.
• Wording: does the phrase read naturally in that country's language?

Do not copy a phrase your app does not serve. It attracts searchers your app cannot help.

For a quick check of one phrase in several countries, use the free keyword checker. Keep the phrases that pass, add them to your Keywords list and localize them for each market with App Store keyword research.

Repeat for each country

Competitors and phrasing change by market. An app that leads in the US may not appear in Germany, and the phrase people type in Japan is rarely a translation of the English one. Wow Keywords tracks 52 countries, so run the same steps in each country you care about.

Check again after your listing or a competitor's listing changes. A rank is an observation, not proof of why an app sits there. For the wider review that this search feeds into, see how to do a mobile app competitive analysis.