Review miningBlog · 9
Visibility in the App Store,
measured, not guessed.
No general ASO advice here. Every piece rests on a problem we actually hit building the tool: how Apple indexes words, how a rank is measured honestly, where the 100 characters get wasted.
If you do not know where to start, pick one of the three doors below.
If you are starting out
The whole job in one sitting: the difference between indexation and relevance, the 30+30+100 character inventory, and the order of the first week.
What is ASO? →If you already measure
With ranking data in hand the right question is where to invest. The answer is almost always the 11-30 band.
Why the 11-30 band matters →If you are about to ship
How you split the 30 characters of title and subtitle is the most expensive decision in your next version.
Splitting 30+30 characters →
Strategy
Strategy
What is ASO? App Store Optimization from zero
App Store Optimization is the work of making an app findable in store search. Indexation, relevance, measurement and priority - the whole job in one piece.
9 min read
Strategy
What copying the same metadata to every country costs you
Every storefront carries its own title, subtitle and keyword field. Copying the English text hands every search in that market to somebody else.
7 min read
Metadata
Metadata
Title and subtitle: how to split 30 + 30 characters
The characters left after your brand name are the most valuable inventory in the App Store. This is how to spend them.
7 min read
Metadata
Stop wasting the 100-character keyword field
A space after a comma, a word repeated from the title, and singular/plural pairs - together they can eat a fifth of the field.
5 min read
Measurement
Measurement
Measuring a metadata change honestly
You shipped the version. The ranking moved. Here is how to tell whether that was you or the store's own noise.
6 min read
Measurement
How App Store keyword rank is actually measured
Rank is not predicted, it is searched for. Knowing how the measurement is made also tells you how much to trust the number.
6 min read
9 pieces in total. If a term trips you up, the -entry ASO glossary defines every one of them the way rankcusp uses it.31-entry ASO glossary
What gets written here
Every article is about something we measure. Threshold keywords, wasted characters in metadata, review mining, divergence between countries - each one is a mechanism that runs in the panel, written out.
What does not get written is just as settled. No case studies, no customer stories, no growth percentages. The data those would need has not accumulated; when it does, it will be published.
This is not modesty, it is usefulness. If "this tactic lifts downloads 40%" has no measurement behind it, the sentence does not tell you what to do next week. A mechanism does.
For the same reason there is no general advice. "Produce quality content" and "listen to your users" are true and unusable; the aim is for every article to end in something you can check.
The five measurements the articles rest on
Whichever article you read you will come back to the same five, so here they are once.
Position: where the app appears when a phrase is searched in a country. If it is not in the first 200 we write "outside 200" rather than inventing a large number.
Popularity: a relative value for how much a phrase is searched, derived from Apple's own signals. Not absolute search volume.
Difficulty: the strength of the apps competing for the phrase. How many carry it in their title, what the rating counts at the top are, how many words the phrase has.
Relevance: whether Apple has associated your app with the phrase. If you appear in the first 200, it has.
The rating curve: how the score and count move over time. It does not carry rank directly, but a drop after a release weakens your strength across every phrase at once.
- Every number in an article comes from one of these five.
- Where something cannot be measured, that is what gets written.
- No claimed percentage effects; that data has not accumulated.
Where to start
The articles can be read independently, but there is an order and following it saves time.
If you are looking at ASO systematically for the first time, start with the piece on the 11-30 band. The product and this blog are both built on that one observation: the highest return does not come from finding new keywords, it comes from the ones you already rank for.
Then the piece on wasted metadata, which shows by counting how much of your 100 characters you actually use. Those two define the first month's work.
Third is pulling keywords out of rival reviews. That is the channel to open once the first two have filled your pool, and it is the one place no tool looks.
The articles on measurement discipline - control groups, how long the index takes to settle, noise versus signal - can be left for last but should not be skipped. Without them every move you make stays unmeasurable.
How often we publish
There is no calendar-driven schedule, and that is deliberate.
Rewriting a subject that has not changed gains a reader nothing; it only grows the archive. A new article appears either when something we measure changes, or when there is a mechanism we have not explained yet.
Existing articles get updated too. When we measure a change in Apple's indexing behaviour the affected texts change and the change is noted - because the same article saying different things on two dates, with no reason given, is what breaks trust.
The glossary and the resource library work on the same logic: the glossary defines terms, the library carries the long guides, and the blog covers the part in between that moves.
Frequently asked
- Why are there no case studies?
- A case study only works with a measured before and after, cleaned of the control group's movement. That data has not accumulated yet; when it does it will be published.
- Can I verify the numbers in the articles?
- Yes, all of them come from open data. Search a phrase in that country, look at the first 20, and you can count the title share by hand. A number that cannot be verified does not go into an article.
- How often does a new article appear?
- Not on a calendar. When something we measure changes, or when there is an unexplained mechanism. Rewriting an unchanged subject grows the archive without helping the reader.
Reading is good. Seeing your own numbers is better.
Paste your App Store link and let the first sweep list the keywords you rank 11-30 for. No card, no setup.
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