Keyword Gap is a powerful tool within SplitMetrics Acquire that provides a thorough semantic analysis by comparing any app with multiple competitors simultaneously. It is designed to help you easily gather important insights into your competitors' keyword strategies, identify the weak areas in your own marketing efforts, and make informed decisions for more effective campaigns and ad groups.
What exactly does Keyword Gap offer?
❇️ Growth Opportunities. With Keyword Gap, you can discover the keywords/search terms that your competitors use but you don't, opening up new paths for growth.
❇️ Competitive Edge. Keyword Gap enables you to identify your app's unique keywords/search terms and those shared with others, which is crucial in maintaining a competitive advantage.
❇️ Visual Evaluation. The interactive bubble charts in Keyword Gap allow you to visually assess various keyword categories, providing a comprehensive picture of your semantic strengths and weaknesses.
❇️ Quick Position Check. The tool enables you to compare keywords/search terms of any app with those of several competitors at once. This helps you quickly understand where you stand in Apple Ads without the need to analyze each competitor one by one.
❇️ Effective Performance Comparison. Keyword Gap lets you evaluate SOV 5d and Organic Rank of your and your competitors' keywords/search terms, providing valuable insights to refine your strategy.
❇️ Access to Key Metrics. You can access essential metrics such as Search Popularity, Organic Results, Impression Volume, and the SOV 5d Top Apps in Keyword Gap. These are the same metrics used in Keyword Discovery and CPP Intelligence for keyword assessment.
How to use Keyword Gap?
Step 1. Go to Market Intelligence in the left navigation menu and click Keyword Gap.
Step 2. Select the app you want to analyze against its competitors.
💡 Did you know? You can search for and select any app from the App Store, not just your own.
Step 3. Choose the storefront that is relevant to you and where the app is available.
Step 4. Select the competitors you want to compare the keywords/search terms with. You can choose up to three competitors for this analysis.
💡 Tip. When looking for a competitor, explore these options:
Use the search function to find a competing app by its name, ID, or App Store link.
Browse through our suggested Top Paid and Top Organic apps or check the Similar apps list if the Top Paid and Top Organic tabs are unavailable.
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 5. Once you determine with competitors, click Show Gap. This will minimize the form and display interactive bubble charts and a list of unique keywords/search terms that are only used by the selected app and not by any of its competitors. It will also show common keywords/search terms that are shared with your competitors, as well as keywords/search terms that you could potentially borrow from them.
❗If you've selected only one competitor and wish to add more, 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.
How to interpret the results?
In Keyword Gap, keywords/search terms can be evaluated in two ways: via visual bubble charts or by examining detailed metrics in the keywords list. The tool compares data from the past 11 days.
Visual Insights
You can analyze your competitors' keyword landscape by exploring different keyword categories, all conveniently presented in the Summary section on the left side.
✔ Missing opportunities: This category shows keywords your competitors use but you don't, or where your app performs poorly. It suggests potential improvements for your keyword strategy.
❗You can filter this category using two options:
All - Displays all of the competitors' keywords or search terms where your performance is either missing or notably low.
Only New - Reveals only the fresh keywords or search terms that could be relevant for your app in the competitive scenario.
✔ Shared keywords: In this category, you'll find the number of keywords/search terms used both by your app and at least one of your selected competitors. This can help you identify areas of keyword overlap.
✔ My unique keywords: This category reveals the number of keywords/search terms used exclusively by your app, not used by any competitors. It highlights your unique strengths.
💡 Tip. Check the labels next to keywords/search terms in the keywords list. Hovering over them will indicate whether a keyword/search term is present in your account and offer additional helpful details.
To explore these categories, simply click any of them to filter the content accordingly.
Once you've selected a keyword category, you can delve deeper into performance using visually intuitive bubble charts. Each bubble shows the percentage of paid keywords that each app has based on the chosen category. Your app is always marked by the same color: light blue.
Hovering over a competitor's bubble will reveal more details about that competitor, offering essential insights into their performance.
Additionally, by selecting a specific bubble, you can compare your data exclusively with that particular competitor. This action will hide all other competitors' bubbles, label them as hidden in the Legend, and exclude other competitors' keywords/search terms from the keywords list. It will also remove other competitors' SOV 5d and current Organic Rank metrics from the list, and disregard their keyword counts from the Summary section.
Next to the bubble charts, you have a Legend section displaying your app and your competitors' apps. This section is clickable and allows you to filter the results on the page. You can also see the total number of keywords/search terms each app has next to its name.
💡 Tip. If you want to bring back hidden competitors, simply click the hidden competitor within the legend.
Keywords List
Beyond visual insights, our tool allows you to evaluate keywords/search terms in the list using a range of metrics👇
💡 Tip. 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 explore keywords in unfamiliar languages and foreign storefronts without getting lost in translation.
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.
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 shows the current position of your app and your competitor's app in organic search results for the keyword.
SOV 5d (current) indicates the share of ad impressions for your app and your competitor's app for the chosen keyword in the specific storefront.
SOV 5d Top Apps allows you to see the level of competition for each keyword and discover which specific applications are using a keyword in their ASA campaigns. You can open the full list of SOV 5d Top Apps by hovering over the help tag (?).
Organic Results displays the total number of apps that appear in the organic search results for the 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 your ad could be seen by potential customers. The metric is based on Search Popularity.
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.
✨ Helpful tricks:
When you hover over a row in the list, the best SOV 5d and Organic Rank scores among apps light up. This helps you quickly see who's on top among competitors.
You can easily check out CPPs used by any keyword. 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.
For a more tailored analysis, you can use the available filters to concentrate on the keywords/search terms most aligned with your objectives.
For instance, you can filter out generic keywords, retaining only those linked to your brand or your competitors' brands. Once filtered, it becomes effortless to identify 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.
After evaluating the keywords using the given metrics, click the Export Report button to download the keywords list in CSV format for further analysis.
You can also compile specific lists by selecting individual keywords/search terms with the checkboxes. Once chosen, these keywords/search terms will be displayed in a designated area on the right of the page. Click Open to see the full list of your selected keywords/search terms.
To download the list, click Export and choose either Download selected as keywords or Download selected as negative keywords, depending on your needs. The report will then be created and downloaded via your browser.
💡 Tip. You can also select all the keywords/search terms displayed on the page in bulk for further downloading or adding to your campaigns or ad groups by selecting the checkbox next to the Keywords column.
The number of keywords selected in bulk depends on the chosen number of lines.
Once you have identified the keywords/search terms you wish to use, you can incorporate them into any of your ad groups or campaigns, or create single-keyword ad groups with them 30 times faster.
🚨 Important note:
When using Keyword Gap, you may encounter error messages in certain cases. Here are potential scenarios that could trigger these errors:
Error from API. If there is an error from the API, you will see the message "Something went wrong. Please try reloading the page."
No Shared Keywords found. When no shared keywords/search terms are discovered, you will encounter the message: "There are no shared keywords with the selected competitors."
No Missing Keywords found. In cases where no missing opportunities are identified, you will see: "There are no missing keywords for your app."
No Unique Keywords found. When there are no unique keywords/search terms for your app, you'll be informed with the message: "There are no unique keywords for your app."
No Keywords Found. If no keywords/search terms are found for the selected apps, you will be notified: "There are no keywords for the selected apps. Please choose different ones."
💡 If you're not seeing any data across the sections, it's usually because there's no Share of Voice (SOV) data available for the keywords related to your app or your competitors. Since the tool relies on SOV to display insights, the sections will stay empty if this data is missing.
You can read more about how SOV works in 📖 this article.
These messages are intended to provide clarity and guidance in case you encounter any issues while using Keyword Gap.
With Keyword Gap, you can identify your unique keywords/search terms and stay ahead of the game, ultimately leading to increased visibility, higher conversion rates, and greater success in your advertising efforts.