See the keywords a Story ranks for in Apple Search

We’re proud to announce another unique feature of the AppTweak ASO Tool! We’ve just added another great insight to our Featured Apps section: you can now track the keyword for which a story ranks on. Discover on which keywords a Story ranks for, its position and its ranking history.

Discover the keywords on which a story ranks

Stories that are published on the Apple App Store Today tab also appear in the Search results of keywords. This is both good and bad news. On one hand, Stories take a lot of space in the Search results, diminishing the visibility of apps that rank on that keyword since users have to scroll further in order to find the app.

On the other hand, if your app is featured in a story, not only will it appear in the Today tab for one day, but it will also appear among the search results of keywords for a given period of time. This increases the chances of users finding your app, especially if you consider that more than 90% of stories that rank on keywords rank in positions from 1 to 4 in Search Results.

Check out when your app was featured in any country with our Featured Apps

With that in mind, it’s important to track the keywords of the Stories your app is featured in to assess its visibility. Some Stories rank on a couple of keywords only. Typically, Stories such as App or Game of the Day, rank on a couple of branded keywords of the app they feature. However, some stories rank for more than 300 keywords, that’s a lot of presence in the App Store Search Results!

The Stories that appeared in the Apple App Stores Today Tab in the US and the n° keywords on which they rank.

In our Featured Apps section, you can check the stories that were published in the Apple App Store Today tab in any country at any date and the number keywords on which they rank. In addition, for each Story, we show you the detail of keywords that specific story ranks on, its position on each keyword, as well as the date range for which the Story was present on a keyword.

These insights help further judge the visibility that Story is giving to your app. How many keywords does it rank on? Are those keywords high traffic keywords? Does the Story rank in a good position on that word? How long did the Story rank on the keyword? These are questions you can answer using this new feature!

Detail of the keywords a Story ranks for in the US Apple App Store, with its ranking history and position.

Using Story keywords in your ASO Routine

Tracking the keywords on which a specific story is referenced not only helps you get an idea of the visibility that Story is giving to its featured apps, it’s also a great source of inspiration to find new keywords relevant to your app. For example, by going through the keywords of a story your app or one of your competitors were featured in, you can get some new ideas of keywords to target and track.

For example, we looked at the 124 keywords that of a Story called “Never Miss a Bill” that was published in the US Today tab on May 20th and that featured 12 billing apps. We found that the list of keywords the Story ranks for are all relevant keywords for the apps that it features.

The 124 keywords that the Story “Never Miss a Bill” ranks for.

Looking for more keyword ideas? Check out the most popular App Store keywords of 2019

Learn more about how Apple manages Story content

Finally, by browsing through this new feature, we learned a lot about how Apple manages Stories and featured content. We thought we could share a few insights with you. Maybe you can share your own learnings once you’ve started to play with the feature yourself!

First of all, we discovered that Stories don’t necessarily appear in the Today tab for the first time. Sometimes, a Story that is published in Today has already been ranking on keywords for several days! For example, the following two Stories were published in the US App Store Today tab on May 22nd, but they have been ranking on 63 and 85 keywords respectively for more than 2 weeks!

Stories sometimes rank on keywords several days before they are published in the Today Tab.

Don’t forget to also check if your app was featured in Apps or Games!

Another interesting thing we noticed, is that Apple sometimes interchanges the Stories that rank on a word. For example, we found two Stories that both feature the game Pokemon GO, and which both rank 2nd for the words “pokimon go” and “polemon go”. However, Apple has been alternating the Stories between themselves, showing one or the other on different days.

Apple alternates Stories in Search Results from one day to the other

We’re sure that you’ll find many other curious insights using this unique feature, and we can’t wait to hear them! You can start browsing the Stories and their keywords right now in our Featured Apps tab. Have fun!