AppTweak API

Get Powerful Keyword Suggestions via Our App Store API

Antoine Bentinby 
Product Manager

6 min read

Do you find yourself wasting time on super repetitive ASO tasks? Our App Store API allows you to automate and customize a range of workflows to help increase your team’s efficiency, free up time for other growth projects, and visualize app store data, your way. The possibilities are endless!

Bringing even more value to your ASO work, you can now programmatically access AppTweak’s database of keyword recommendations. Having gathered keyword insights every day since 2014, this represents data from over 10 million keywords and 3 million apps in 100+ countries.

Looking for keyword inspiration outside of brainstorming sessions or your competitors? To ensure your app remains highly visible on the store, you need to be aware of the latest keyword trends that will help you boost your organic app growth and plan an effective app marketing strategy.

Our new keyword suggestions endpoints will allow you to do just this! In this blog, we’ll cover interesting use cases of API access to keyword suggestions, show you the data now available, and highlight how you can integrate this data into your software.


Keyword suggestion endpoints with AppTweak’s App Store API

To allow you to programmatically access keyword suggestions via our API, the following endpoints are now available:

  • Keyword suggestions by app: Returns the keywords for which the selected app ranked in the top 100 search results at least once in the last 3 months. You can sort this list by ranking position, search volume, or “score.” The “score” is an indicator between 0 and 100 that estimates how effective a keyword is at driving downloads for the selected app.
  • Keyword suggestions by category: Returns a list of popular keywords for a given category, based on the top-performing keywords for that category’s top 50 apps.
  • Keyword suggestions by volume change: Returns a list of keywords that experienced the biggest change in search volume over a selected date range.
  • Keyword suggestions by trend: Returns the keywords that Apple displays in the “Search” tab before a user has typed anything (over a given date range).

Receive keyword suggestions for your Apple Search Ads campaigns

Want to discover keyword suggestions that are regularly updated while remaining relevant to specific apps? AppTweak has got you covered.

Connecting your platform to AppTweak’s API will allow you to create a full keyword ad performance dashboard. Besides keyword suggestions, we recommend you track the rankings, volumes, and downloads per keyword. The image below shows an example dashboard that you could easily create yourself.

You could then automate the dashboard to be updated at the frequency you want. Allowing you to customize your ASO insights your way, you can even create new KPIs – such as a volume-to-difficulty ratio – to help you spot opportunity keywords with high search traffic and low competition.

Custom-made keyword table populated with AppTweak dataCustom-made keyword table populated with AppTweak data.

In the App Store Search tab, users receive keyword suggestions even without having typed anything. We call these “trending keywords,” which look like this on your phone:

Trending keywords appear on the App Store under the Discover headingTrending keywords appear on the App Store under the “Discover” heading.

When you click on a keyword from this list, Apple launches a search for the selected keyword. It can be particularly interesting to keep an eye on these trending keywords to help plan your ASA campaigns or create discoverable in-app events.

Let’s compare the top 10 trending keywords in South East Asia over the months of October 2021 and April 2022:

Top trending keywords on the App Store in South East Asia in October 2021Top trending keywords in South East Asia (October 2021).

Top trending keywords on the App Store in South East Asia in April 2022Top trending keywords in South East Asia (April 2022).

Both graphs show interesting insights:

  • Games seemed to trend more in October 2021 than in April 2022 (5 related keywords in October vs. 0 in April). A potential explanation could be that COVID-19 cases were relatively higher in October than in April the following year, causing people to stay home more (and thus play more mobile games).
  • Travel apps were quite popular in April 2022 (3 out of the top 4 keywords). The upcoming summer break and low COVID cases could explain this.
  • The distribution of trending keywords across countries was more balanced in April 2022 than in October 2021. For instance, only one trending keyword in Myanmar made it to the top keywords across South East Asia in October. Instead, half of the trending keywords in Myanmar that month were for local apps in the banking or telecom sector.

Want to access similar data? We have a ready-to-use recipe that will help you do this quickly and easily!

Receive monthly updates of your competitors’ top keywords

Think your competitors get most of their downloads from their brand name? This might well be the case, but don’t forget that generic keywords (and their combinations) can also represent a significant portion of installs. Spy on your competitors’ visibility strategies to identify their strengths/weaknesses and your future opportunities.

In the example below, we compare three meditation apps (two more established apps, Calm and Headspace, and a newer app, Balance) on the UK App Store. We looked at the 10 keywords driving the most downloads, represented by the “score” parameter of our keyword suggestions by app endpoint, in May 2022.

Top generic keywords for Balance, Calm, and Headspace on the UK App Store in May 2022Top generic keywords for Balance, Calm, and Headspace on the UK App Store (May 2022)

Interestingly, Balance relied on only one generic keyword (“meditation”) to drive downloads, while downloads for the two other apps were spread across 5 generic keywords. From there on, it would be interesting to investigate how Balance could increase its rankings for these opportunity keywords like “sleep” and “mindfulness.”

Would you like to create a similar dashboard? Following this ready-made code recipe

How to integrate our keyword suggestions into your software

Our API responses will be in JSON format. There are several ways to integrate them into your chosen software:

  • Create a proof of concept: Storing the JSON response as a local file is probably the easiest way to validate your tests.
  • Integrate the response in your own tool: We recommend following the same logic as the rest of your tool, whether it be a relational database (SQL) or document-oriented database (Mongo DB).
  • Integrate the response in an online dashboard: Create a CSV file from a Google sheet and write an app script to automate it.

Conclusion

Thanks to our new keyword suggestions endpoints, you can now access the largest and most accurate ASO keyword database. Whether you want to fuel your Apple Search Ads campaigns, track your competitors’ keywords, or run extensive keyword research, you can now automate these tasks with AppTweak’s App Store API.

Ready to get started? All AppTweak Pro plans (or above) will automatically receive at least 25,000 monthly API credits included.

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Antoine Bentin
by , Product Manager
Antoine Bentin is a Product Manager at AppTweak. He loves APIs but also enjoys good coffee and outdoor climbing.