How App Store search ranks apps: documented and measured

Apple says App Store search results depend on two kinds of signals: text relevance, meaning matches in your app’s name, subtitle, keyword field and primary category, and user behaviour, such as downloads, ratings and reviews. Apple does not publish how much each one weighs, and it changes the system over time. So the useful work is concrete: put the right words in the fields Apple indexes, keep them out of the fields it says it ignores, and measure where your app actually appears, keyword by keyword and country by country.

This guide separates three things that ASO advice often mixes up: what Apple documents, what Apple leaves unsaid, and what you can observe yourself.

What Apple documents

Apple’s own page on App Store search gives the list of signals in one sentence.

Search results are based on a number of factors, including text relevance (matches for your app’s title, subtitle, keywords, and primary category), as well as user behavior (downloads, ratings and reviews, and more).

Documented · Apple App Store search

“Title” here is your app name, the 30-character name set in App Store Connect. Apple’s other pages fill in the rest of the picture. Here is every element of a listing, with what Apple says about its role in search.

Element	What Apple says about search	Limit
App name	Matched for text relevance	30 characters
Subtitle	Matched for text relevance	30 characters
Keyword field	Matched for text relevance; not shown to customers	100 (see below)
Primary and secondary category	“Indexed by our search algorithm”	One each
Company (developer) name	“Your app is searchable by app name and company name”	—
Ratings and reviews	“Can influence how your app ranks”	—
In-app events	Appear in search results next to the app	10 published at once
Promoted in-app purchases	Appear in search results	—
Custom product pages	Can replace the default page for the keywords assigned to them	70 pages
Promotional text	“Doesn’t affect your app’s search ranking”	170 characters
Description	Not in Apple’s list of text matches	4,000 characters

Three of these lines deserve a closer look, because they decide where your words should go.

The keyword field is indexed but invisible. Apple’s search page limits it to “100 characters total, with terms separated by commas and no spaces”, and App Store Connect Help says “100 bytes”. The keyword field guide explains which one App Store Connect actually counts, and how to fill it.

The categories count as text. Apple writes that your “primary category and optional secondary category are indexed by our search algorithm”. A category is not a free keyword, though. Apple adds: “Choosing categories that aren’t relevant is grounds for rejection by App Review.”

The promotional text does not count. Apple says it plainly, on two pages:

In addition, keep in mind that promotional text doesn’t affect your app’s search ranking so it should not be used to display keywords.

Documented · Apple Creating your product page

The description is a quieter case. Apple’s list of text matches names the title, subtitle, keywords and primary category, not the description. App Store Connect Help says the description “will be used for web engine search results once you release your app”, which is about search engines on the web, not the App Store. And the product page guide adds: “Don’t add unnecessary keywords to your description in an attempt to improve search results.” Write the description for people.

What appears in search results besides your app

A search result is more than a name and an icon. Apple documents several elements that can appear in it:

Screenshots or previews. “Depending on the orientation of your screenshots, the first one to three images will appear in search results when no app preview is available.”
Ratings. “Ratings and reviews appear on your product page and in search results.”
In-app event cards. People who have downloaded your app before see your event card in search results; people who never downloaded it see your screenshots or previews instead.
App tags. Apple says search results “may also include app tags”, generated “using large language models (LLMs) based on the metadata you’ve provided in App Store Connect.”
A custom product page. If you assign keywords to a custom product page, that page can appear for those keywords instead of your default page. See the custom product pages guide.

Apart from ratings, which Apple says can influence ranking, Apple does not describe any of these as changing the order of results. They change what a person sees once your app is in the list, and so how many people tap it.

What Apple does not say

Apple’s documentation is precise about which fields count. It says almost nothing about how much they count.

No weights. Apple does not say whether a word in the name counts more than the same word in the keyword field, or how much a rating moves a result. Any article that gives you percentages is guessing.
“And more.” The user-behaviour list ends with “and more”. Apple does not list the other signals.
Change over time. The search page opens with “We’re constantly evolving how search works on the App Store.” A rule observed last year can be wrong this year.
Personalisation. Apple’s privacy page says “your searches, browsing, purchases, and device trust score may be used to personalize your experience on the App Store”. It does not say whether the order of search results differs from one person to the next. So the rank you see on your own iPhone is not a neutral reading.

What Apple leaves unsaid is where measurement takes over.

What you can measure yourself

You cannot see Apple’s ranking system, but you can see its output: the ordered list of apps it returns for a keyword in a country. Measured carefully, that list tells you a lot.

Three things show up in that one measurement.

A rank belongs to a country. The same keyword put the same app 5th in one storefront and 21st in another. A single “rank for habit tracker” does not exist; there is one per storefront.

The list is deep, and finite. The App Store’s own search returned up to 250 apps. Below that, an app is simply not in the results for that keyword in that country.

The order moves. In France, three searches a few minutes apart gave 7, 10 and 7. Most keywords were stable that evening; some were not. One search would have reported 10, or 7, depending on the minute. That is why ASO Gauge searches three times a day and keeps the median, as explained in the guide to measuring rankings.

The store can also search for another word than the one typed. That evening, a search for “morning rutine” in the United States came back as a search for “morning routine”, and said so. The spelling correction guide shows when that happens and what it means for a brand name.

What to do with this

Apple’s documentation and your own measurements lead to a short list of practices.

Put each search word in one indexed field. The name, the subtitle and the keyword field are all matched. Apple asks you not to repeat, in the keyword field, any word already in your app name, subtitle or category. Every word you repeat is room taken from a new one.
Choose the primary category on purpose. It is indexed, and it must be relevant to the app.
Keep keywords out of the promotional text and the description. Apple says the first doesn’t affect ranking, and asks you not to stuff the second. Use them to convince the people who already found you.
Ask for ratings the way Apple allows. You “can prompt for ratings up to three times in a 365-day period” with the system prompt, and App Review rules out custom review prompts and any manipulation of “charts, search, reviews, or referrals”.
Localise. Localized keywords are searchable wherever the App Store supports that language, which is more countries than you might think. The localizations guide has Apple’s table.
Measure before and after every change. A change to the name, subtitle or keywords goes live with a new version. Judge it on several days of ranks, not on one search. The guide to judging a listing change shows how.

Common mistakes

Writing your app’s name or your company name in the keyword field. App Store Connect Help: “Your app is searchable by app name and company name, so you shouldn’t duplicate these values in the keyword list.”
Using a competitor’s name. App Store Connect Help says “Names of other apps or companies aren’t allowed”, and guideline 2.3.7 forbids packing metadata with “trademarked terms, popular app names”.
Reading your rank on your own phone. Your account’s history may shape what you see, and one search is one sample. Measure from a neutral request, several times.
Treating one day as a trend. Ranks move a little every day on their own. A change is visible only when the before and after ranges stop overlapping.

Sources

Apple, App Store search: ranking factors, keywords, categories, ratings, in-app events, app tags.
Apple, Creating your product page: name, subtitle, promotional text, description, screenshots in search results, rating prompts.
Apple, App Store Connect Help, Platform version information: keywords, description, promotional text.
Apple, App Review Guidelines: 2.3.7 (names, keywords, metadata), 5.6.1 (review prompts), 5.6.3 (discovery fraud).
Apple, App Store & Privacy: personalisation.
Measurements: the App Store app’s iPhone search, three searches per keyword between 20:39 and 20:52 Paris time on 25 October 2026, by ASO Gauge’s method.

Checked on 25 October 2026.