The App Store keyword field, explained

Every language of your listing has a keyword field. Customers don’t see it, but App Store search does: Apple says results are based on text relevance (matches for your app name, subtitle, keywords and primary category) and on user behavior such as downloads, ratings and reviews.

So the keyword field is where you add the searches your name and subtitle can’t hold. You change it with each new version of your app.

Apple describes the limit two ways: 100 characters in its product-page guide, and up to 100 bytes in App Store Connect’s field reference. For ordinary English text those are the same; many non-Latin characters use more than one byte.

In our own uploads, App Store Connect accepted a Russian keyword field of 180 bytes, so in practice it counts characters. If a field in a non-Latin script is ever refused, shorten it.

Separate terms with commas and no spaces; spaces inside a phrase are fine. Apple’s own example is Property,House,Real Estate. Each keyword needs more than two characters.

Apple suggests leaving these out, because search already covers them or they add nothing:

• Words already in your app name, subtitle or category.
• Your company name.
• Plurals of words you already have in singular form.
• The word “app” and the names of categories.
• Words twice, and special characters such as # or @.

Names of other apps or companies, trademarked terms you aren’t authorized to use, celebrity names, and terms that have nothing to do with your app. Promotional text doesn’t affect search ranking, so it isn’t a place for keywords either.

Fill the field with words people search for that your app can rank for, country by country. Two numbers help: how much a phrase is searched (demand) and how strong the apps already at the top are (difficulty).

When you rewrite the field, keep the words you already rank for, unless you’re sure the new ones are worth more. Removing a word may weaken or eliminate rankings for phrases that depended on it.