Does App Store search correct typos? Misspelled keywords, plurals and accents

Sometimes. In our searches on 25 and 26 October 2026, the App Store corrected some misspelled searches and said so in its answer: “morning rutine” in the United States came back as a search for “morning routine”, “medtation” as “meditation”, and “calandrier” in France as “calendrier”. Other misspellings got no correction at all, yet still returned apps for the word people meant, in a different order: “habbit tracker” shared 7 of its first 10 apps with “habit tracker”, and “recipies” 6 of 10 with “recipes”. French words typed without their accents behaved the same way. Apple does not document any of this. So write every keyword correctly, treat each spelling that people really type as its own keyword, and check what the store does with your brand name before you commit to it.

This guide shows what was measured, what Apple and Google say, and what it changes for your keywords and your app’s name.

Does the App Store correct misspelled searches?

Yes, for some words. When it does, the answer the App Store app receives names the word it searched instead. We searched like the App Store app does, on its iPhone search, one search per spelling.

No simple rule shows in these results. “medtation”, missing a letter, was corrected; “calender”, with one wrong letter, was not. Distance from the right word does not decide it, or not alone.

Apple says nothing about it. Its App Store search page, which lists the signals behind search results, never mentions spelling, typos or corrections, and it opens with a warning that applies here: “We’re constantly evolving how search works on the App Store”. A correction observed today can disappear, or appear, tomorrow.

Is a corrected search the same as the right spelling?

At the top, yes. Deeper in the list, no. To know whether two lists differ because of the spelling or just because of the minute, we searched the right word twice first.

The night before, “medtation” and “meditation” had 130 apps in common, almost the same figure; “meditaion”, also corrected to “meditation”, had 219 in common with “meditation” on both nights. So a corrected search shows the corrected word’s first results, and below them, a list of its own.

It is not always so. In France, on 25 October, “calandrier” returned exactly the list for “calendrier”: all 234 apps, in the same order.

For your app, this means two things. If it is in the first ten for the right spelling, people who mistype see it about where they would have seen it: the habit and routine app we follow was 1st for “morning rutine” and for “morning routine”, and 7th for “dayli planner” and for “daily planner”. Further down, your rank for a misspelling can differ from your rank for the right word, or your app can be missing from one of the two lists.

Which misspellings does the store accept without saying so?

Several of the ones we tried. For “habbit tracker”, “budgetting app” and “recipies”, the App Store announced no correction, yet the first results were habit trackers, budget apps and recipe apps. The store tolerated the typo silently, and returned a different list.

The first three are clear: the right spelling gives the same list twice in a row, and the misspelling gives another one. On 25 October, the same three pairs gave 7, 6 and 6 apps in common among the first ten. “calender” proves nothing: “calendar” searched twice, three seconds apart, kept only 8 of its first 10, the same overlap as with the misspelling.

There is one more twist. Among the first five results for “recipies” was an app whose name is spelled exactly that way. A misspelling can be someone’s brand.

So a misspelling the store accepts silently is a separate keyword, with its own list and your own rank in it.

Do plurals and accents change the results?

Yes, both, in our measurements.

Plurals. Apple’s rule that plurals “are considered duplicates” is about what you write in the keyword field. It says nothing about what people search. “habit tracker” and “habits tracker” shared only 3 of their first 10 apps on 25 October, as the keyword field guide shows.

Accents. In French, people often type without accents. The App Store does not correct that, and the list changes.

Write your French keywords with their accents, as people expect to read them. If your audience also types them without accents, that is a second search with its own list, and the only way to know your rank there is to measure it. The localizations guide explains where each language’s keywords count.

What do Apple and Google say about misspellings?

Apple’s guidance on App Store search is silent on spelling. Its advice on app names is not:

Choose a simple, memorable name that is easy to spell and hints at what your app does. Be distinctive. Avoid names that use generic terms or are too similar to existing app names.

Where Apple does write about misspellings is in its ads documentation. In Apple Ads, an exact match keyword “matches your ad to searches on an exact keyword, as well as common misspellings and plural variations”, and broad match covers variants “such as singular, plurals, misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and phrases that include that term”. That is how Apple matches paid ads to searches. Apple does not say whether organic results use the same matching.

Google is the only store that warns about it in its listing advice:

Avoid using subtle misspellings of general terms, as users may end up correcting misspelled search terms.

That is advice for a Google Play title, but the logic holds on the App Store too: a name built on a near-miss of a common word may never be searched as you wrote it. The Google Play guide covers the rest of Google’s rules.

What if your brand name is close to a common word?

Invented names are a common choice: a common word with a letter changed or added. We searched three of them.

Three lessons follow.

1. Not corrected does not mean free. Two of the three invented names were already used by several apps.
2. Close to a common word is a gamble. The store corrected “medtation” and not “calender”. You cannot predict which way your name will go: search it. If the store corrects it into a common word, people who type your brand land in a list for that word, among every app that matches it.
3. Check every storefront. Corrections depend on the word and the storefront: in France, “calandrier” was corrected to “calendrier”. Search your candidate name in each country you plan to sell in, before you register it.

For the name and the subtitle themselves, the app name and subtitle guide explains what Apple allows and what it indexes.

What does this mean for your keywords?

1. Write keywords correctly. The right spelling is what people mostly expect, and the store corrects some misspellings to it anyway.
2. Don’t spend keyword characters on misspellings by default. Apple says nothing about whether a misspelling in your keyword field helps. A corrected misspelling already shows the right word’s first results. An uncorrected one is worth a place only if people really type it; Apple Ads’ search popularity for that spelling is a way to check.
3. Track a misspelling as its own keyword only when the store searches it without correction. Then it has its own list, and your rank in it is its own measurement.
4. Watch for corrections in your measurements. If the store corrects a keyword you track, the rank you read is a rank for another word. A measurement that hides the correction misleads you.
5. Check again later. Apple says it changes search constantly, and nothing guarantees that today’s corrections hold next month.

How does ASO Gauge mark a corrected search?

When a search comes back corrected, ASO Gauge does not record it as a plain rank for your keyword. The cell is marked Corrected: “The store searched another word. A small number is your rank in its results.” The meter names the word: Apple searched “morning routine” instead. So you always know whether a rank belongs to the keyword you track or to the word the store chose. The rest of the method, three searches a day and the median, is on the home page.

Sources

• Apple, App Store search: signals behind search results, plurals in the keyword field, a search that keeps evolving; nothing on spelling correction.
• Apple, Creating your product page: advice on app names.
• Apple, Apple Ads glossary: exact and broad match, misspellings, for ads.
• Google, Get discovered on Google Play search: misspellings in titles.
• Measurements, the App Store app’s iPhone search, one search per spelling: 19 searches in the United States between 23:22 and 23:24, and 15 in France at 23:29, Paris time, on 25 October 2026; 20 searches in the United States and 6 in France between 00:04 and 00:07, Paris time, on 26 October 2026, with the right spellings searched twice where the text says so.
• Measurement, the habit and routine app’s ranks: three searches per keyword between 20:39 and 20:52, Paris time, on 25 October 2026, and one on 26 October 2026 at 00:04.

Checked on 26 October 2026.