Keyword Tracking

Overview

The Keyword Tracking tool opens up new opportunities for keyword research and optimization. You can access all the ranked keywords of the app you work with, create a semantic core, as well as monitor the positions of the keywords already added to your account on one page.

The page has two main tabs:

• My tracked keywords - this is the main section for working with keywords. The tab provides different options for keyword research and analysis of keywords you follow.
• All ranked keywords - a list of all keywords the app was ranked for grouped by Top-1, Top 2-5, and Top 6-10, Top 11-20, Top 21-50.

If you want to learn only about the "All ranked keywords" tab, skip to the following section of this article: Keyword Rankings: All Ranked Keywords

Keyword Research

The Keyword Research tab is available in the My tracked keywords section.

AppFollow automates the keyword research process and provides sets of ready-to-use keywords. In this section, you'll find the keyword's Popularity Score shown alongside the keyword. The higher the score, the more popular it is among app store users.

Toggle the option to "Hide Unpopular Keywords" to exclude the least popular keywords from these lists.

1. The AI  Recommendations tab allows you to automate the keyword research process. Our algorithm analyzes your app's performance and shows the most effective keywords for this app. These keywords provide excellent opportunities for high ranks. 
   
   

   AI Recommendations takes all the keywords from apps in the current workspace and finds the best for the selected app. Suggested recommendations depend on what apps are in the workspace. If you see recommendations that don't match your app, you may try to reorganise your workspaces, so similar apps are in one workspace.  

2. The Top Impressions tab offers data on the distribution of impressions between all ranked keywords for the selected app. You can quickly see which keywords bring your app the most impressions, and as a result, make your app more visible in the store search results. 
   
3. The Top Downloads tab displays the list of keywords that bring the most downloads for the selected app, allowing you to easily track all the keywords that contribute to the app's organic downloads. 
   
4. The  Missing Keywords tab shows all keywords that your app is ranking for right now. This is the perfect place to find out what you are missing. Click on a keyword to start tracking it or click on the "Track All Keywords" button to create a semantic core with all your current keywords.
   In this tab, keywords are divided into top-ranking tiers:
   
   • Rank Top-1: keywords that show your app in the first position in the app store's search results 
   • Rank Top-5: keywords that show your app between the 2nd and 5th positions
   • Rank Top-10: keywords that show your app between the 5th and the 10th positions
   • Rank Top-50: keywords that show your app between the 10th and the 50th position in the app store search results.

   For Android apps, there are up to Top-30 keywords available and for iOS apps, there are up to Top-100.

   

5. When you're looking at an iOS App Store app, you'll see an addition tab: Apple Recommendations. This section shows data directly from the App Store and displays the keywords that Apple considers most relevant for your app. Check your competitors' keywords to find a great set of first-hand keywords. 
   This tab is a representation of how the App Store sees your app: if the keywords in the list correctly describe your app, that means that your ASO efforts are paying off and your app will rank for more relevant keywords. 

   

6. The Metadata tab shows keywords from the app's title and description. This allows you to find out which keywords an app is targeting in its metadata.
   

   

7. The Research tab provides real-time search data for the App Store and Google Play. Use this tab to search for any keyword in any country and get real-time search results as they appear in the store. On the left, you'll also see the search suggestions that the store provides. 
   

When a keyword including a typo is searched for an iOS app, the results shown will be converted to the corrected version of said word, and a small card will appear to inform the user of that mistake. That happens for App Store apps only, because of the new featured released by Apple on iOS 14 that applies spell-check in all App Store searches. 

This feature will help keep the visibility of your app on check. Keep in mind that not every country has automatic Spell-Checking on App Store, and therefore this card will not be triggered for every app on AppFollow (depending on the country of the Workspace/App you are viewing).

Keyword Groups and Actions

Keyword groups and actions are available in the My tracked keywords section.

After you start tracking a set of keywords, you can create groups to organize them. For example, group competitor keywords or separate keywords by type, niche, and app version. Divide keywords into categories to easily track updates within a specific group of keywords without the need to search for them manually. 

Available actions:

1. You can set up mail or Slack alerts to get notified of any changes in the tracked keywords.
2. The Export keywords option allows you to download the keywords in CSV or Excel with the filters selected.
   Note, the filters and sorting options applied within the Keyword Tracking interface are not reflected in the exported file. 
3. To manually manage the list of keywords on the My tracked keywords tab, use the Edit keywords button. You can add keywords simply by typing them or editing the existing list of keywords.

Rank History

The Rank History chart is available for My tracked keywords.

This chart visualizes the app's ranking positions and their progress over time. Just select a keyword from the Keyword Ranking section below, and you will see a line showing how the app's position has changed for the selected keyword. 

When looking at the Rank History chart, make sure to specify the required country and time span using the filters at the top of the page. Your app's rank will be different depending on the country and the timeframe you choose.

The Top 10 apps section on the right replicates the store's search results for the keywords selected in the Keyword Rankings section. You will see the top 10 apps that rank for this keyword in the App Store or in the Google Play Store.

Keyword Rankings: My Tracked Keywords

The Keyword Rankings section shows all the keywords you are currently tracking, the changes in their daily positions, their best results, how many keywords are used in the app's title and subtitle, and their Effectiveness, Popularity, and Difficulty Scores.

If the app doesn’t rank for a keyword, you'll see blank spaces in the corresponding columns.

The results will be different depending on the selected country and timeframe. If you don’t see any results, check whether you’ve added any keywords for this country.

Next to each keyword in the list, you can see the following icons:

• "B" shows if a brand name contains a keyword. The bold icon means the keyword is branded for the selected app. The grey icon marks branded keywords for the other apps. 
• "Ideas" opens the list of keyword suggestions.
• "Eye" shows the list of Live Ranking keywords.

Keyword rankings on My tracked keywords provide the following information:

• Popularity shows the traffic score based on data from the App Store and Google Play. We use an internal algorithm to calculate a score based on this data. If you see a score of 0 or 5, this means that the keyword is very rarely used in searches. The maximum score is 100.
• Difficulty shows how hard it would be to outrank your competitors in the App Store or Google Play Top-10 with the specified search terms and phrases. The higher the difficulty, the less suitable it is for text optimization. The maximum difficulty score is 100.
• Effectiveness serves as a relative indicator that shows the potential of a keyword for a specific app. It is a mathematical calculation to consider if it is worth trying to rank a particular keyword or keyword phrase by weighing up its popularity versus how much competition there is for it. In simpler words, if you see that the keyword effectiveness is high (more than 20), it's worth including it in your app name or subtitle. 
• Rank is the app's position for a keyword.
• Change demonstrates the difference in ranking for the time span you set in the date filter.
• Best Rank is the highest position of an app for a given keyword.
• % of Search Downloads shows the tracked keyword's share in the selected app's organic downloads. Without an integration, only relative numbers (in %) are available.
• Search Downloads show the absolute number of downloads for the specified keyword. Available only when an App Store Connect or Google Play ASO Integration is configured.
• Apps show the total number of apps that rank for a keyword.
• Rank history is a mini-chart that visualizes the app's rank history for a certain keyword.

Keywords for iOS that are filtered as mistyped through Apple's spell-checking will appear with a red spell-check indicator:

Keyword Rankings: All Ranked Keywords

The tab shows all the keywords the app appeared in the search results. Keywords are grouped by Top-1, Top 2-5, Top 6-10, Top 11-20 and Top 21-50. When you are evaluating the potential of a keyword, you can add the most promising ones to My tracked keywords where you will see their exact position.

Now you can work with all the keywords the app is ranking for in the same way as the keywords you already added to the account.

Keyword rankings on All Ranked Keywords provide the following information:

• Popularity 
• Difficulty 
• Effectiveness 
• % of Search Downloads shows the tracked keyword's share in the selected app's organic downloads. Without an integration, only relative numbers (in %) are available.
• Search Downloads show the absolute number of downloads for the specified keyword. Available only when an App Store Connect or Google Play ASO Integration is configured.
• Apps show the total number of apps that rank for a keyword.

The Rank, Change and Best Rank data is available once you add a keyword to My tracked keywords. To view the details on each metric in the Keyword rankings table just jump to the previous section. 

Update the device filter on this tab to indicate whether you want to add the keyword to the iPhone or iPad section within "My Tracked Keywords".

Filters

We have a bunch of useful filters on "My tracked keywords" and "All ranked keywords" tabs to help you sort or filter the information according to your ASO needs.

You may select Favorite, Ranked, Unranked keywords and apply filters by Rank only on the My tracked keywords.

1. Select allows you to pick a group of keywords. You will see a tick next to each selected keyword. Then you can apply a bulk action, for example, move them to a separate tab, copy or delete.

• Favorite keywords that you have marked with a star.
• Low ranking keywords. If you try searching your app with these keywords on the store search page, you will find it among the lowest results.
• Ranked keywords —  keywords that your app is indexed by on the store.
• Unranked keywords are those that are not showing your app in search (or showing below the 100th position).
• Unpopular keywords are those having low popularity according to AppFollow.

2. Manage table will help you hide the columns that you don't need:

3. Search by keyword will help you find the keyword you are looking for. Click "Exact match" to narrow down the results to the ones containing the keyword as you have typed it in. For example, if you type "interest" and click "Exact match", we will exclude "interested" and "interesting" from the results. You can either work with all keywords on your list or with a specific group. 

4. Below, you can see other filtering options:

• Symbols — choose a keyword with a specified number of symbols, e.g. shorter or longer ones.
• Popularity — filter out the keywords with a specific popularity score.
• Effectiveness — concentrate on words with higher/lower effectiveness.
• Rank — limit the keywords to the ones that show your app in Top-5, 10, 50, etc.

View filters will hide or show keywords labeled as:

• Branded — keywords containing a brand name.
• Generic keywords do not include a brand name
• Show typos will identify keywords with typos
• Favorites only will display only the keywords marked with a star.
• Show unpopular will include the keyword with a popularity score less or equal to 5 (out of 100)
• Show translation will activate the Keyword Translation feature. 

Our ASO experts recommend using these filters every time you create metadata sets. If you want to find only non-branded high-popular candidates across your keyword collection, you can easily tweak the settings to get the list of matching results.

5. Check the "Mark keywords in title and subtitle" boxes to see what keywords you are using in the app's visible metadata to ensure you didn't miss anything important. These keywords will be highlighted in blue for the title and in green for the subtitle: