ASO Guide · 6 min read
App Store keyword difficulty and popularity, explained
What App Store keyword difficulty and popularity scores really mean, how they're estimated from public Store data, and how to combine them into an opportunity score you can act on.
Two numbers decide whether a keyword is worth your time: popularity (how much demand it has) and difficulty (how hard it is to rank for). Understanding what's behind each one is what separates a useful shortlist from a wish list.
Popularity: is anyone searching this?
Popularity estimates the relative search volume of a keyword on the App Store. Apple doesn't publish exact numbers, so it's inferred from public signals — how prominently the term surfaces in search autocomplete, how many apps compete for it, and how those apps perform. The result is a relative score, not an absolute count: it tells you whether "meditation" gets far more searches than "sleep sounds for toddlers," which is exactly what you need to prioritize.
Difficulty: can you actually rank?
Difficulty estimates how entrenched the apps already ranking for a term are. A keyword dominated by apps with millions of ratings, strong title matches and years of history is hard — you won't crack the top 10 with a new launch. A keyword where the leaders are mid-sized, loosely matched, or few in number is soft, and that's your opening.
- Strength of the incumbents (ratings volume, install signals).
- How tightly those apps' titles and subtitles match the keyword.
- How many apps are seriously competing for it.
Opportunity: combining the two
Neither number is useful alone. High popularity with high difficulty is a trap — lots of demand you can't capture. Low difficulty with no popularity is a waste — easy to win, nobody there. Opportunity is the combination: enough demand to matter, little enough resistance to break in.
Putting it to work
When you research keywords, score every candidate on both axes and sort by opportunity, not by popularity alone. AppCompete computes popularity, difficulty and an opportunity score for any keyword from live App Store data, so you can skip the spreadsheet. For the full workflow, see App Store keyword research, then track the winners to confirm they pay off.