App RevsApp Revs

Guides

Nine short chapters on how the App Store ranks, and six playbooks that do it in order. Each states what the US store looks like right now, from 7,471 head terms read on October 4, and ends with the tool it applies to.

How search works

  1. What decides a search resultTwo things: whether your text matches, and how your app has performed. Everything else is a detail of one of those.
  2. Popularity and difficultyThe two numbers on every keyword, exactly as they are computed, and the range a new app can win.

Keywords

  1. Finding the keywordsTen to fifteen candidates from your own head, the names above you, and Apple's own suggestions; then filter, then place.
  2. Writing the name, subtitle and keyword fieldThirty, thirty and a hundred characters, weighted in that order, with rules that decide which of them count.

The listing

  1. Screenshots are metadata nowSince June 2025 Apple reads the captions on your screenshots and ranks you on them. Write them as search terms.
  2. Localizations multiply the keyword fieldEach language you add is another name, subtitle and keyword field in every store that uses it.

Growth

  1. Ratings: the number that ranks youNew ratings are the strongest behavioural signal, and they only arrive when you ask at the right moment.
  2. Growth without download numbersApple publishes no downloads. The rating count is the public number that moves with them.
  3. Change one thing, then wait a weekMetadata changes only with a version, the index takes days, and only one change at a time tells you anything.

Playbooks

  1. Validate an idea from search before you buildAn hour with the explorer tells you whether anyone searches for the thing, who already owns the results, and what it would take.
  2. Your first ten keywords in thirty minutesFrom an app with no list to a name, a subtitle and a keyword field that rank, using the scan, the top 10 and the two numbers.
  3. Launch week: the first fourteen daysA new listing has text and nothing else. What to have in place on day one, what to read each morning, and the two mistakes that cost the launch.
  4. Localize in a day: which languages firstEach localization is another name, subtitle and keyword field wherever that language is indexed. The order to add them in, and what to put in each.
  5. Read a competitor's reviews for keywords and featuresTheir one-star reviews are your roadmap and their five-star reviews are your subtitle. How to read fifty reviews in ten minutes and take four things away.
  6. Popularity 5: what changed in September 2025 and what to do nowApple re-scored most mid-tail terms to its floor. How to read demand for a term that shows <5, and why the top 10 matters more than the number now.