What is ASO?

Why search

An app has to be found before it can be installed, and there are two ways to be found in a store: someone hands you a link, or someone types something into the search box. The first runs on ads and social, costs money and effort, and stops the day you stop. The second doesn't stop — every day you hold a rank compounds.

That's why the unit of ASO isn't installs, it's which keyword you rank for and where. Installs are the outcome; rank is what produces it.

Which fields do the stores index?

The two stores do the same job with different fields. The most common mistake is stuffing keywords into the iOS description: Apple does not read it for search.

How rank is measured from outside

The store never tells you your rank. App Store Connect and Play Console show installs, conversion and (partly) which terms brought people in — but not the answer to "where do I rank for 'dream meaning' today?"

That answer comes from running the search and counting. A term is queried against the store's public search surface, your app's position in the returned list is recorded, and the same thing happens again the next day. The value isn't in one day's number — it's in the difference between days.

• iOS — the public search surface returns the first 100 results. "Not ranked" here means "not in the top 100".
• Android — Google Play offers no official search endpoint; its search page returns roughly 20-30 results at a time. Depth is therefore about the first 30, and an honest tool prints that on screen.
• Country — every storefront is its own search engine. The same term can be 3rd in one market and 80th in another; the two can't share a row.

Rank alone isn't enough: demand

Ranking first for a term nobody searches buys you nothing. So a second question sits next to every rank: does anyone search this?

The industry's standard answer to that used to be the Apple Ads "Search Popularity" score. That score largely stopped working in autumn 2025, and it never existed in every storefront to begin with. The alternative signal is the store's own autocomplete: does it suggest the term, and with how many variants. Details on its own page.

The wall has a name

"Competition is strong" is not a measurement. The measurement is who ranks above you on that keyword: how many ratings they have, what score, how old they are. A six-year-old app with 740 ratings is not the same wall as a new one with 79 — the first is a reason to drop the keyword, the second is a reason to push.

A practical rule: for every keyword you want to climb, look at the five apps above you. If all five are older and heavier than yours, the keyword is the wrong pick — a narrower term buys a higher rank for the same effort.

Questions measurement can't answer

A tool saying what it does not measure is the precondition for trusting what it does. From outside, these are unknowable:

• A term's real monthly search volume — neither Apple nor Google publishes it. A tool that shows one is producing an estimate.
• A rival's installs and revenue — model output, not measurement.
• Personalized results — the store reorders by language, country and history. What gets measured is the un-personalized baseline.

Three things can be measured instead, and they're enough to decide with: rank, rank movement, and the strength of the apps above you.

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