Skip to main content

Keyword Discovery

Find new, relevant keywords for your campaigns, allocate among ad groups instantly, or download for further analysis – all in one place.

Written by Polina Barysheva

Our Keyword Discovery tool is an advanced keyword mining solution that allows you to obtain new keywords for your Apple Ads campaigns. Effortlessly select your own or any competitors' apps for analysis and uncover valuable keywords to boost your app's visibility and performance 💥

What are the advantages?

✅ You save time and money on search terms fishing. Use Keyword Discovery in addition or instead of running Search Match campaigns.

✅ You can quickly and easily find only new keywords since our tool removes duplicates automatically and suggests only new ones.

✅ You seamlessly explore growth opportunities worldwide without getting lost in translation, as the tool translates unknown keywords to English for you.

✅ The list of the suggested keywords has high-relevancy potential, so you don't go blind. The recommendations are based on:

  • Apple Ads and SplitMetrics AI recommendations.

  • The keywords by which your competitors are displayed in the organic search results.

  • Suggestions from the App Store.

✅ The tool is easy to use and has a convenient UI. You can add the keywords directly to your account or download them for further analysis. Also, find keywords you don't want your app to be associated with and add them in Negatives immediately.

✅ The Search Popularity, SOV 5d Top Apps, Organic Rank, Organic Results, Impression Volume, Relevance Score, and Brand Protection insights are available for all suggested keywords to analyze their market landscape and decide whether you want to add them to your account.

✅ All suggestions are sorted by default in a way that you can first see and start working with keywords with the highest relevancy potential for your app.

How to use Keyword Discovery?

1. Go to Market Intelligence section > Keyword Discovery in the left navigation menu. App and storefront are already predefined based on alphabetical order.

2. Select the app for which you would like to get keyword suggestions.

💡 Did you know? You can search for and select any app from the App Store, not just your own. This powerful enhancement allows you to gain deeper insights into your competitors' keyword strategies and uncover new opportunities to stay ahead in the competitive landscape.

3. Select the storefront. Only countries and regions where the app is run are available.

Once done, you will be able to start mining new keywords based on the selected app, its competitors, or based on the specific keyword separately.

Mining new keywords based on the selected app

In the By my app tab, you can see the list of new keywords relevant to the app. The list is loaded automatically once you select your app (or any other app from the App Store) and storefront.

Mining new keywords based on the competitors

In the By competitors tab, you can perform your competitors' keywords analysis to find the keywords that might be lucrative for your campaigns. Alternatively, you can select any app from the App Store to discover keywords based on that app's competitors.

To start, follow the steps below:

Step 1. Determine top competitors of the selected app to use for mining new keywords.

❗ There are three ways to do so:

  1. Specify competing apps of your choice. You can search for them by their app name, App ID, or App Store link. To find the App Store link of a specific app, go to the App Store, search for the desired app, and copy its URL from the browser address bar.
    ​

  2. Choose from our suggested Top Paid and Top Organic apps or check the Similar Apps list if the Top Paid and Top Organic tabs are unavailable.

3. Create your own list of competitors for the chosen app and select one from that list.


You have the flexibility to create multiple custom competitor lists. Simply click + Add new list from the dropdown. To edit or delete a list, use the icons next to its name.

❗Important notes:

- If the checkbox is grayed out when you try to add a competitor, it means your list is full. Just delete a few suggested competitors to make room, and then you'll be able to select the checkbox and add a new competitor.

- If you come across a "Something went wrong" error, please try the action again. This error suggests that the API didn't respond for some unknown reason, and retrying usually resolves it.

Step 2. Once you determine with competitors, click Get keywords. The form will be minimized, and the list of suggested keywords based on the apps you indicated previously will be generated.

❗To add more competitors, click the + button. If you want to remove a competitor's app that you have already selected, hover over its icon and click X. The same X button can be used to remove all competitors.

Mining new keywords based on the specific keyword

With the By keywords tab, you can find new keyword ideas for your campaigns based on the specific keyword. To start researching:

  1. Enter a keyword into a search box. You can enter up to 5 keywords by separating them with a comma.

  2. Click Get Keywords to generate a list of keyword suggestions, including long-tail keyword variations.

✨ Tips and tricks for mining:

  • Get the best keywords recommendations by using the Mark keywords as irrelevant button. You can easily cross out unwanted keywords from recommendations to enhance your experience and ensure more relevant suggestions in the future.

  • You can also quickly access the By keywords tab by clicking the Get keyword suggestions icon next to a specific keyword on the By my app or By competitors tabs. So, you'll be able to expand your searching and uncover even more relevant keyword ideas.

  • You can easily check out CPPs used by any keyword in the list. Simply click the "Show CPPs by keyword" button, and you'll be redirected to the CPP intelligence tool with ads that are or were shown for that keyword.

How to choose the suggestions?

Metrics

You can use nine metrics for the assessment of the suggested keywords 👇

❗To hide any unnecessary metrics, simply click the Edit columns icon and clear the relevant checkboxes.

✔ Translations column shows the translation of keywords into English, making it simple for you to assess keywords in unfamiliar languages and foreign storefronts. You can conveniently sort all the keywords by their translations by clicking on the Translations column header.

Note. Translations may be unavailable for keywords with a Search Popularity score of 5 or lower.

✔ Search Popularity reflects the search volume of the keyword in the selected storefront. Alongside the Search Popularity value, there is an additional indicator revealing keywords that have experienced changes in popularity in the last day. This feature assists you in identifying trending keywords or those that may now attract less traffic compared to the previous period.

✔ Organic Rank allows you to sort the suggested list by the position in the organic results and then apply specific strategies.

✔ SOV 5d Top Apps allows to see the level of competition per each keyword and discover which specific applications are using a keyword in their Apple Ads campaigns. To open the full list of SOV 5d Top Apps, hover over the help tag (?).

✔ Organic Results shows the total number of apps that are displayed in the organic results for a specific keyword.

✔ Impression Volume is an estimate of the number of times your sponsored ad could be displayed to users per day for the chosen keyword in the selected country. Impression volume is an important metric to consider when planning your advertising campaigns, as it gives you an idea of how often potential customers could see your ad. The metric is based on Search Popularity.

✔ Relevance Score indicates how relevant a keyword is to an application in a specific storefront. Here are the different classifications:

  • Highly relevant: These keywords are an excellent match for the application. They closely align with the app's main features and target audience.

  • Relevant: Keywords falling into the relevant classification are still a good match for the application. However, they are also commonly associated with other applications within the same app category. While they maintain relevance, they may not indicate a unique selling point for the app.

  • Neutral: Keywords in this classification are neutral for the app. They are neither relevant nor irrelevant. This classification is also used when we have limited information about the keywords.

  • Irrelevant: Keywords falling under the irrelevant classification do not significantly align with the application. They are better suited for a different app category or a specific application. These keywords are unlikely to contribute to the app's visibility or success.

✔ Brand Protection assesses how well the owner protects their branded keywords. This metric relies on SOV data and helps identify which competitors' branded keywords to target, as well as your own vulnerable keywords. There are 3 levels of protection:

Note. If a keyword is either unbranded or lacks sufficient data to link it to an app, you'll see a gray shield icon in the Brand Protection column. If you believe a particular keyword should be associated with a specific app, please let us know.

✔ Keyword Type indicates the category of keywords: green icons represent your brand keywords, grey icons represent your competitors' branded keywords, and generic keywords are indicated by a grey icon with the letter "G". Hovering over an icon allows you to learn more about the competitor who owns that keyword and find a link to their App Store page.

Filtering

Use filters to focus on the keywords that matter most to you. For example, you can choose a specific source of suggestions to narrow down the results. Available options include 👇

By my app tab

  • Apple Ads: keyword suggestions from native Apple Ads.

  • SplitMetrics AI: AI-generated keyword suggestions.

By competitors tab

Along with Apple Ads and SplitMetrics AI, you'll also find:

  • Competitor's organic keywords: keywords for which the selected competitor ranks in organic search results.

By keywords tab

In addition to Apple Ads and SplitMetrics AI, you can also explore:

  • App Store hints: suggestions the App Store offers when a user enters a search query.

  • App Store hints by hints: keywords suggested based on users' previous search queries.

Additionally, you can filter out generic keywords, keeping only those that are relevant to your brand or your competitors’ brands. This way, you can focus on keywords that directly impact your business. Once you apply the filters, you’ll easily be able to spot your branded keywords and those of your competitors in the Keyword Type column.


To hide filters that you rarely use and keep only the relevant ones, click the Filters icon and unselect the checkboxes.

Note. You can apply different filters in every tab to gain the most relevant keywords for your campaigns.

🚨 Important notes:

  • Suppose you change the storefront where some previously shown apps are unavailable. A badge with an exclamation point will appear on their icons. You can remove these apps or replace them with other competitors from the suggested list.

  • The number of main competitors may vary up to 10.

  • Ranging from 5 to 100, Search Popularity shows a share of users who have entered a search query in a particular storefront. The value isn't absolute and depends on the population of a specific storefront: mind that 50% of the US and the UK storefronts will differ in absolute terms.

How to handle the results?

☝️ You can work with the suggested keywords in several ways:

1. Click the Export Report button to download the list of all suggested keywords and continue analyzing them in a CSV file.

2. Create specific lists and export them. Choose the necessary keywords individually by selecting the corresponding checkboxes. The keywords are added and displayed in a separate section on the right. To see the full list of selected keywords, expand the section by clicking Open.


To download the list, click Export > Download selected as keywords or Download selected as negative keywords depending on the purpose.

The generated reports are downloaded via your browser.

Note. You can choose all the keywords displayed on the page in bulk for further downloading or adding to the campaigns or ad groups. Select the checkbox next to the Keyword column header.

The number of keywords selected in bulk depends on the chosen number of lines.

3. Once you’ve found the keywords you like, you can add them to any of your ad groups or campaigns, or create single-keyword ad groups with them 30 times faster.

Did this answer your question?