How to read your App Store keyword ranks
A rank is your place in one country's search results for one phrase. Here's how to read it, and what moves it.
What a rank is
Your rank for a phrase is where your app appears when someone searches for it on the App Store: #1 is the first result. Each country has its own App Store with its own results, so your rank for the same phrase can be #2 in the United States and #40 in Germany.
That’s why ranks are checked country by country, using the phrases people actually type there. Those may be local-language phrases, English phrases, or both.
What moves it
Apple says search results depend on text relevance (your app name, subtitle, keywords and primary category) and on user behavior: downloads, ratings and reviews. Ratings and reviews also show next to your app in the results.
Text is the part you can change today. Better text can improve discovery, but downloads, ratings and reviews also depend on the product experience and how well the product page converts.
Demand and difficulty
Demand says how much a phrase seems to be searched, as a score from 0 to 100. Difficulty says how hard it is to reach the top for it, from how strong the apps already there are. In HappyKeywords both are estimates worked out from live App Store results, not Apple’s own search counts.
The phrases worth the most work are often in the middle: real demand, beatable apps at the top, and your app just outside the top 10.
Watching it over time
Ranks move naturally from day to day. Watch the trend over a week or two and compare the periods before and after a listing change. A movement around the same time is useful evidence, but not proof that the metadata change caused it.