Popularity and difficulty

Popularity is Apple's own search popularity for the term in that store, 5 to 100, read monthly from Apple Ads. It is a rank of demand, not a count; most real terms sit between 10 and 40, and only the biggest brand names approach 100. Below 5 Apple reports nothing, shown here as <5: the term is typed rarely enough that ranking first for it brings almost no one.

Difficulty is the strength of the apps already in the top 10, 0 to 100: the log of the median rating count of those ten, so 1,000 ratings is about 50, 100,000 about 83, a million 100. Next to it are the inputs: how many of the ten have over 100,000 ratings, how many carry the term's words in their name, how many were updated in the last six months. Apple publishes no difficulty; every tool computes its own, and this one shows its inputs so you can disagree with it.

A listing with no ratings cannot displace apps with hundreds of thousands, whatever its metadata says. The range worth working is popularity 25 or more with difficulty under 60; if your category's terms all sit lower, popularity 20 is high for you. Terms that name one app (marked brand) bring people looking for that app.

Relevance is the third property and only you can score it. A term can be popular, winnable and wrong: "free calendar" for a paid calendar brings people who will not pay and may leave a one-star review for it. Keep a high, medium, low mark on every candidate before you look at the numbers.