ASO Competitor Analysis: How to Find Keywords Your Rivals Miss

Most app developers approach ASO in isolation. They brainstorm keywords from scratch, guess at what users might search, and optimize based on intuition. Meanwhile, their competitors have already done years of testing, spending real money on Apple Search Ads, and iterating on metadata across dozens of update cycles. ASO competitor analysis lets you tap into that collective intelligence. Instead of starting from zero, you start from the combined learning of every app in your market.

This guide covers the full workflow for analyzing competitor keywords, finding gaps in their strategy, and integrating those insights into your own metadata. By the end, you will have a repeatable system that surfaces high-value keywords you would never find on your own.

Why Competitor Analysis Accelerates ASO

The App Store is a zero-sum ranking environment. For any given search query, there are a fixed number of visible positions. If a competitor ranks #1 for a keyword, they are capturing the majority of taps for that term. Understanding which keywords your competitors target, and which ones they rank well for, tells you two critical things:

1. Where the proven demand is. If multiple competitors rank for a keyword, it almost certainly has meaningful search volume. You do not need to guess.
2. Where the openings are. Competitors cannot cover every relevant keyword. Their metadata has the same 100-character limit as yours. The keywords they skip or underperform on represent opportunities for you.

A study by StoreMaven found that apps using systematic competitor keyword analysis improved their organic rankings 2.4x faster than those relying solely on internal brainstorming. The reason is simple: competitor data removes guesswork and surfaces keywords with proven commercial intent.

Three Types of Competitors to Track

Not all competitors are the same. A comprehensive analysis tracks three distinct groups, each providing different strategic insights.

1. Direct competitors

These are apps that solve the same core problem as yours. If you build a budgeting app, your direct competitors are other budgeting apps like YNAB, Mint, and Copilot. They compete for the same user intent and the same keywords.

Direct competitors are your primary source for keyword ideas because their users are your users. Every keyword they rank for is potentially relevant to you.

2. Adjacent competitors

These apps serve a related but different need. For a budgeting app, adjacent competitors might include investment tracking apps, banking apps, or financial planning tools. They overlap on some keywords ("money manager," "finance app") but diverge on others.

Adjacent competitors are valuable because they reveal keyword clusters you might not have considered. A banking app might rank for "spending tracker" or "bill reminder," both of which could be relevant to your budgeting app.

3. Aspirational competitors

These are the market leaders in your broader category. They may not be your direct competitors today, but they define the keyword landscape. For a budgeting app, this might include apps like PayPal or Cash App, which dominate broad financial keywords.

Aspirational competitors show you the ceiling. You probably cannot outrank Cash App for "money," but analyzing their keyword footprint reveals high-volume terms you might target with long-tail variations.

Step 1: Building Your Competitor Shortlist

You do not need to track 50 competitors. A focused list of 8 to 12 apps provides plenty of keyword signal without overwhelming your analysis. Here is how to build that list:

1. Search your core keywords. Go to the App Store and search the 5 to 10 terms most central to your app. Note which apps appear consistently in the top 10. These are your direct competitors.
2. Check your category charts. Look at the top 20 apps in your primary and secondary App Store categories. Note any that overlap with your value proposition.
3. Review Apple Search Ads. If you run Search Ads, check the "Competing Apps" report to see which apps Apple considers your competitors based on audience overlap.
4. Ask your users. In onboarding surveys or user interviews, ask "What other apps did you consider before choosing ours?" The answers often surprise.

BoostYourApp's App Intelligence lets you look up any app in the store and see its full metadata, category rankings, and estimated download data. This makes competitor shortlisting fast and evidence-based.

Step 2: Reverse-Engineering Competitor Metadata

Once you have your shortlist, the next step is extracting their keyword strategies. You cannot see a competitor's keyword field directly (Apple hides it), but you can infer it through several methods.

Visible metadata analysis

Start with what you can see. For each competitor, record:

• App Name: What keywords are embedded in the name?
• Subtitle: Which terms does the subtitle target?
• Description: While Apple says the description is not indexed for search, it reveals the language and positioning the developer prioritizes.
• In-App Purchase names: These are indexed. Check if the competitor has strategically named their IAPs to target additional keywords.
• Update notes: Some developers rotate keywords through their release notes, which can hint at terms they are testing.

Keyword ranking analysis

The most powerful method is to look at which keywords a competitor actually ranks for. If an app ranks in the top 50 for a keyword, that term is almost certainly in their metadata (or closely related to it). By building a list of every keyword a competitor ranks for, you effectively reconstruct their keyword strategy.

BoostYourApp's Competitor Keywords feature reveals the full keyword footprint of any tracked app, including ranking positions, volume estimates, and week-over-week movement. You can compare up to 5 competitors side by side.

Step 3: Finding Keyword Gaps

A keyword gap is a term that one or more competitors rank for, but you do not. Gaps represent the highest-probability keyword opportunities because they have already been validated by the market.

Building your gap analysis

Create a spreadsheet (or use a tool that automates this) with the following structure:

1. Column A: Keyword
2. Column B: Your current ranking (or "N/A" if unranked)
3. Column C: Competitor 1 ranking
4. Column D: Competitor 2 ranking
5. Column E: Competitor 3 ranking
6. Column F: Estimated search volume
7. Column G: Gap type (complete, ranking, or coverage)

Sort by search volume descending. The top of this list shows your highest-value opportunities: keywords with proven demand where you are currently missing out.

Step 4: Evaluating Gaps by Volume and Relevance

Not every gap is worth closing. Some competitor keywords may be irrelevant to your app. Others may have too little volume to justify the metadata space. Apply these filters:

Relevance check

For each gap keyword, ask: "If a user searched this term and found my app, would they be satisfied?" If the answer is no, skip it regardless of volume. Ranking for irrelevant keywords hurts your conversion rate, which in turn damages your rankings for relevant keywords.

Volume threshold

Set a minimum volume threshold based on your market. For US English, a search popularity score of 30+ is generally worth targeting. For smaller markets, adjust accordingly. Do not waste keyword field characters on terms that generate fewer than 5 searches per day.

Scoring framework

Assign each gap keyword a priority score from 1 to 10 based on:

Keywords scoring 7 or higher are your immediate targets. Those scoring 4 to 6 go into your queue for future testing cycles.

BoostYourApp's Keyword Inspector provides volume scores and difficulty ratings for any keyword, plus a breakdown of the current top 10 results. This data feeds directly into your scoring framework.

Step 5: Integrating Gap Keywords into Your Metadata

You have your prioritized list. Now you need to fit the winners into your 100-character keyword field (plus name and subtitle). This is a constrained optimization problem with a few guiding principles:

1. Do not sacrifice what is working. Before adding new keywords, identify which current keywords are driving rankings and downloads. These are non-negotiable. Never remove a keyword that is ranking in the top 10 and generating installs.
2. Replace underperformers. Look for keywords in your current set that have not cracked the top 50 after two or more update cycles. These are candidates for replacement with your new gap keywords.
3. Leverage word combinations. Remember that Apple creates compound keyword matches. If your gap list includes "budget planner" and "budget tracker," you only need to add "planner" if "budget" and "tracker" are already in your metadata.
4. Use localization for overflow. If you have more high-quality gap keywords than you can fit in 100 characters, use the Spanish (Mexico) localization to extend your US keyword capacity to 200 characters.
5. Batch changes carefully. Avoid changing more than 30% of your keywords in a single update. If you swap everything at once and rankings drop, you will not know which changes caused the problem.

Monitoring Competitor Changes Over Time

Competitor analysis is not a one-time exercise. Your competitors are optimizing their metadata too, often on the same 4 to 6 week cycle you should be following. Ongoing monitoring surfaces three types of valuable signals:

New keywords appearing

When a competitor suddenly starts ranking for a new keyword, they likely added it in a recent metadata update. This is a leading indicator of a keyword they believe has value. If it is relevant to your app, consider testing it yourself.

Keywords dropping off

When a competitor stops ranking for a keyword, they may have removed it. This could mean the keyword underperformed for them, or it could mean they made space for something they consider more valuable. Either way, it is a data point.

Ranking shifts

If a competitor jumps from #30 to #5 for a keyword, they likely invested in that term (through metadata changes, Apple Search Ads, or both). Big ranking improvements signal strategic priority and validated value.

Set up a weekly review cadence. Every Monday, check your competitor tracking dashboard for notable changes. Flag new keyword entries, significant ranking jumps (10+ positions), and any metadata updates to app names or subtitles.

BoostYourApp's Competitor Keywords tracks ranking changes for all competitor keywords daily and highlights significant movements, making your weekly review a 5-minute task instead of a 2-hour research project.

Practical Workflow Template

Here is a step-by-step workflow you can follow each optimization cycle. This template assumes you have already set up competitor tracking and have baseline keyword data.

Example: Fitness app competitor analysis

To make this concrete, consider a fitness tracking app analyzing three direct competitors.

Four weeks later: the app ranks #12 for "home workout," #18 for "strength training," #8 for "workout log," and has improved to #19 for "step tracker."

Common Pitfalls in Competitor Analysis

Next Steps

ASO competitor analysis transforms keyword optimization from guesswork into a data-driven discipline. By systematically studying what works for other apps in your market, you compress months of trial-and-error into a focused, repeatable process.

Start by selecting your top 8 to 12 competitors. Use Competitor Keywords to reveal their full keyword footprint, Keyword Inspector to evaluate each opportunity, and App Intelligence to monitor their broader strategy. Then integrate the best gaps into your next metadata update and measure the results.

The data is there. Your competitors have done the hard work of validating which keywords matter. All you need to do is look.