Review miningKeyword difficulty calculator
Work out how hard a search term's first page is to take, with the formula the product itself runs.
A keyword's difficulty is not a feeling. It is read off the first page. This calculator runs the same function rankcusp's daily sweep runs - the only difference is that you read the numbers off the store instead of us.
The score comes back on the 0-100 scale the paid tools report on, and every term's contribution is shown separately. No black box: if you dislike the number, you can see which input produced it.
In which country's store did you search?
Apple's first page is ten; if you looked at fewer, write that number.
A quarter of the score: weight 25%.
Separate the rating counts of the first-page apps with commas. We take the median.
The App Store cuts off at 200 results. This part is not scored - it only separates a measured first page from an empty response.
Fill in the three fields describing the first page to see the score. We do not count a missing field as zero - an unmeasured value is not a zero.
How to use it
- 1
Run the search yourself
Search the term in the storefront you are targeting. The first ten results are what the whole calculation rests on.
- 2
Count the title holders
How many of those ten carry your phrase verbatim in their title? This is the heaviest term in the score.
- 3
Enter the rating counts
Type the leaders' rating counts separated by commas. The calculator takes the median; leave out the ones you cannot see.
- 4
Read the score
Under 60 is a field a metadata edit can enter. Above it, placing a word is not going to be enough on its own.
What the difficulty score measures
Difficulty says how much competition standing near the top of a keyword takes. It is computed from four observations, and their weights are not arbitrary - they answer the question of who holds the first page, and with what.
- Title holders (40%): a rival carrying the phrase in its title is indexed for it at the highest weight Apple gives. Displacing that is not a metadata job.
- Incumbent size (30%): the median rating count of the first page. Large apps stay up there on behavioural signals.
- Rating quality (15%): the median star average. A high-rated first page is defended by conversion as well as by size.
- Saturation (15%): how many results the search returns at all. The App Store caps at 200, and a term that reaches the cap is crowded rather than empty.
Difficulty is never read on its own
A high score does not mean walk away. If you already rank 11-30 for the term, the distance is closed and the move can still be worth making. A high score on a keyword you have never ranked for is a real wall.
Low difficulty is not good news on its own either: a term nobody searches is always easy. Difficulty is read next to popularity - high popularity with low difficulty is the ideal target, and it is rare.
How this differs from the product
Same formula, different source. Here you supply the observations, so you get one snapshot of one keyword. In the product the same maths runs every day, for every keyword and every storefront you track, and the history accumulates.
By hand, one keyword takes a few minutes. An app's pool holds hundreds of phrases, and which of them fall inside the band changes every week. That is where the actual work starts.
Frequently asked
- Why are the numbers not pulled from the store automatically?
- Deliberately. Requests made for anonymous visitors spend the same per-address budget the customers' daily measurement runs on; Apple throttles by IP, and a blocked address stops the measurement for everybody. So the calculator works on the numbers you read.
- Can I look at the top five instead of the top ten?
- You can - the ratio is computed correctly as long as you say how many apps you looked at. But the first-page decision is made over ten, so use ten where you can.
- How do I know the total result count?
- The App Store cuts search results off at 200, and most popular terms hit the ceiling. If you are not sure, leave it at 200; the term is only 15% of the score and the result screen says the assumption is there.
- What score should I target under?
- The threshold the field settled on is 60: below it, a keyword is considered enterable with metadata. Treat that as a starting point rather than a rule - on keywords you already rank for, the threshold moves up.
Other free tools
- Metadata checkerAudit your title, subtitle and the 100-character keyword field, and see how many characters are being wasted.
- Competitor keyword gapPull out the words your rivals' metadata carries and yours does not.
- Review keyword extractorPaste user reviews and get the searchable phrases back, with the narration filtered out.
- ASO ROI calculatorPut a monthly and yearly figure on a ranking improvement, in your own numbers.
Something does this for every keyword, every day.
By hand, one keyword takes a few minutes. rankcusp measures every phrase in your pool every day, separates the ones that fall into the 11-30 band, and proposes a single metadata move for each.