The turning point in ASO: a guide to raising visibility and staying in the race

The fields Apple indexes

The fields that make you findable are limited and they do not carry equal weight. Any edit made without knowing what counts where is a shot in the dark.

App name: visible to the user, indexed, the strongest field. It is also the most expensive - the character limit is tight and the name carries brand value.

Subtitle: visible, indexed, the second strongest. Easier to change than the name; the field most often used to carry a cusp-band phrase to the first page.

Keyword field: invisible to the user, 100 characters, open only to the developer. The words in it combine freely with one another to form phrases - the field's most important and least known property.

Fields that are not indexed: the long description, the screenshots, the release notes. Those matter for conversion, not for being found. Stuffing keywords into the description tires the reader and gains nothing in search.

And there is the country dimension: each of the 175 countries and regions Apple is open in has its own keyword field, and most of them are indexed independently.

The four things that cannot

A guide's credibility is measured by what it declines to say. Four things cannot be measured, and tools claiming otherwise are estimating.

Absolute search volume. Apple does not publish how many times a phrase is searched in a month. Popularity is relative and is written as relative everywhere.

Download count. Apple does not give it to third parties; the figures in circulation are computed backwards from rank and rating count, and their error bars vary widely by category.

Revenue. In-app purchase and subscription revenue is entirely closed. We can see the price, not how many paid it.

Conversion rate. How many of the people who saw the page installed is visible only in your own developer account.

All four look fillable with an estimate. We do not fill them, because the moment an estimate goes on a screen the reader takes it for a measurement and decides on it.

Month two: the first moves

In the second month one move is made per week and every move is measured.

Choosing the move: from the 11-30 band on your list, the phrase with the highest popularity. The ones lower in the band are cheaper - winning a few places is easier than winning fifteen.

Choosing the field: subtitle for phrases at 11-15, keyword field for those at the bottom of the band. Touching the app name is right only when the phrase genuinely describes what the product does.

Then waiting. Apple's index does not update immediately; arrival usually takes a few days. A second change in that window mixes the effects of two moves together.

Then comparing. Subtract the control group's average movement and write what is left down to the move. If you won, apply the same kind of move to the next phrase; if you lost, undo it.

And record every move: date, country, which field, its old form, its new form. That record is the third month's raw material.

• One move a week, one field per release.
• Start from the 11-30 band, highest popularity first.
• Subtitle at the top of the band, keyword field at the bottom.
• Subtract the control group's movement every time.
• Record every move with five fields; it is the only reliable way to undo one.

Countries: the most neglected part of the job

Most teams do ASO for one country and leave the rest empty. That is the largest and most invisible loss there is.

Every country Apple is open in has its own keyword field. Leaving one empty spends all 100 characters there, and there is no warning of any kind: your app is live, its page renders, it simply does not appear in search.

Second: the same language is searched differently in different countries. Local equivalents, everyday usage and brand names diverge. Copying one country's metadata into another spends one of the two.

Third: letter folding depends on the country. In Turkish and Azerbaijani a capital I becomes a dotless ı, everywhere else a dotted i. Applied wrongly, a phrase like "AI" becomes "aı" in the Turkish pool and matches nobody searching for it.

Fourth: cost. Each country means searching all of your phrases again. Adding a country costs more than adding a phrase, which is why countries go in one at a time.

The practical route: run the loop for a month in the storefront with the most downloads, then add the second. Starting in ten at once ends with measurement in none.

Frequently asked

How long does ASO take to show a result?

The first measurable one usually lands in the second month: one move, the index settling, and a week's comparison. Meaningful learning takes three months.

My app is not live yet - is there anything I can do now?

You can run the pool-widening part: rival metadata, search suggestions, category charts and rival reviews. Writing the first metadata against that pool is far easier than correcting it later.

How many countries should I start in?

One. Run the loop for a month where you get the most downloads, then add the second. Starting in ten at once ends with measurement in none of them.

Should I optimise my screenshots too?

Yes, but that is conversion work, not ASO. The two run on different measurements: ASO moves visibility, screenshots move conversion. If your rank rose and downloads did not, it is the screenshots' turn.

Why no percentages or average effects?

Writing an average effect down requires long measurement across many apps, and that data has not accumulated. When it does it will be published; until then a percentage would be invention.