App Store keywords: how to fill the 100-character field

Apple describes search ranking as text relevance plus user behavior. The text it matches is your app name, subtitle, keywords and primary category (its search guide adds that an optional secondary category is indexed too), and your company name is searchable. The behavior side includes downloads, ratings and reviews.

The description isn't on that list. Apple asks you not to add keywords to it to improve search results, and says promotional text doesn't affect ranking. So App Store keywords don't need to be in the description. Write it for people deciding whether to download; it also feeds web search engines once the app is released.

Apple's search and product page guides say 100 characters. The App Store Connect reference says 100 bytes. For English without accents the two are identical. Apple doesn't spell out how it counts Japanese, Chinese or other multibyte scripts in this field, so go by what App Store Connect accepts when you save, not by a byte count from your text editor.

A space after a comma spends a character on nothing. Spaces inside a phrase are fine, and a phrase earns its place when people type it as a unit, like "meal plan".

Apple tells you not to repeat words from the name, subtitle or category, and treats plurals as duplicates. The reading ASO practitioners rely on is that Apple matches individual words across those fields, so "tracker" in the name plus "water" in the keywords can surface the app for "water tracker". Spend the field on words that appear nowhere else.

Guideline 2.3.7 says not to pack metadata with trademarked terms, popular app names or irrelevant phrases to game the system, and that Apple may modify inappropriate keywords at any time. Guideline 5.2.1 covers trademarks in general, and Apple's search guide calls improper keyword use a common reason for rejection. Describe what the app does ("budget", "receipt scanner") and leave rival brand names out, translated fields included.

Every language on your listing has its own 100-character keyword field. Apple says people can search localized keywords in every storefront that supports that language, and its localization reference lists those languages per storefront, so the US searches ten keyword fields once all ten languages are filled.

That's what ASO tools mean by cross-localization: filling Spanish (Mexico) or Chinese (Simplified) to gain keyword room in the US. Practitioners report that words don't combine across languages, so put complete terms in each field and skip words the primary language already covers. People whose device uses that language see the name and subtitle you wrote there, so keep those in their language.

Keywords are version metadata, like the description. Changing them means creating a version, submitting it with a build and waiting for release. Plan keyword tests around your release schedule and change one thing at a time, or you won't know which edit moved a rank.

Since October 2025 you can also assign keywords to custom product pages, which then appear in search for those keywords instead of your default page. Apple asks that each keyword combination point to a single product page.

Apple doesn't publish search volume. Apple Ads shows search popularity from 1 to 5, based on App Store searches, next to its keyword suggestions, and the search hints that appear as you type in the App Store are a free source of candidate terms. Apple's own trade-off: popular terms like "social" bring traffic but are highly competitive, while less common terms bring less traffic and less competition.

App Store Connect doesn't report keyword ranks, so track them per storefront before and after each release. Then open App Analytics, filter by App Store search as the source, and compare impressions and conversion rate. MetaRun tracks ranks per storefront and reports moves of five places or more, which saves checking by hand.

Apple doesn't publish search volume. The signals you do have are autocomplete suggestions, where you rank today, which apps hold the top spots, and, once enabled, Apple's own search impression reports for your app.

MetaRun turns those into tools. Your agent can research terms, track them, check ranks on demand, and write keyword fields that fit in 100 characters without repeating what your name already covers.