Apple Search Popularity for new ASA markets now on AppTweak

As you already know, Apple has recently released its Advanced Search Ads in 6 new countries namely France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and Korea. This is big news if you’re working on the Paid Strategy of your app, but, it is also huge in terms of ASO.

When Apple releases Advanced Search Ads (ASA) in a new country, it also discloses the Exact Keyword Search Popularity for these countries. AppTweak has already integrated this valuable indicator in its platform so that you have the exact Apple Volume for any searched keyword.

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[UPDATE - June 2019]: End of May 2019, Apple released Apple Search Ads in 46 additional countries, making the Ad Platform available for a total of 59 storefronts. This means that the Apple Search Popularity score is now available in all of those 59 markets, disclosing an accurate keyword popularity indicator for those countries. AppTweak has added the Search Popularity score to its ASO Tool for all the available ASA markets. Not only does AppTweak show the exact Search Popularity score of any keyword in those countries, it also gives its history. This allows you to assess if a keyword is gaining or losing in popularity over time.

How to read Search Popularity

Lose no time and start working on your ASO right away on AppTweak. Check what is the Search Popularity of the keywords you are following in our ASO tool and compare with the keywords your competitors are using. Here are a few important facts to keep in mind when looking at this new keyword volume indicator:

Max Value: 100
The closer the Search Popularity is to 100, the more popular the keyword in the given country

Min Value: 5
That means that if a keyword has a Search Popularity of 5, very few people search it in the App Store

Median: +-25*
That means that 50% of keywords (keywords with a Search Popularity of 5 excluded) have a Search Popularity under 25. In other words, a keyword with a Search Popularity of 25 or above is already more popular than >50% of keywords
*depending on the country

Another important element to consider is the distribution of keywords per Search Popularity. We found that very few keywords had a Search Popularity above 50 and that nearly all keywords with a Search Popularity above 80 are brands.

The same trend was observed in each ASA country. So keep in mind: a keyword with a Search Popularity above 25 is already a very good volume keyword.

50% of keywords have a Search Popularity below 25. Keywords with a score above 80 are nearly exclusively brand names.

→ Check out our other tips to choose the best keywords for your app’s ASO

Top 10 keywords with the highest Search Popularity

To give you a better idea of how difficult it is to find a keyword with a Search Popularity Score close to 100, we ran a research over millions of keywords in each country and came up with the top 10 keywords with the highest Search Popularity for each one.

What we found was that some brands were constantly among the most popular words across all 6 countries. Other top performers are local brands, or brands that happen to be very popular in a specific country (such ‘lovoo’ in Germany, ‘line’ in Japan, or ‘meitu’ in Korea).

FRANCE		GERMANY		SPAIN
snapchat	100	instagram	100	instagram	100
instagram	98	snapchat	94	facebook	90
facebook	94	facebook	92	whatsapp	90
youtube	91	youtube	91	fortnite	88
whatsapp	91	tinder	88	youtube	87
messenger	91	lovoo	88	tinder	85
fortnite	89	netflix	88	juegos sin wifi	85
tinder	88	spotify	86	snapchat	85
netflix	88	amazon	84	netflix	84
jeux	86	messenger	84	cabify	83

ITALY		JAPAN		KOREA
instagram	100	youtube	100	카카오톡	100
facebook	95	line	98	배달의민족	99
whatsapp	94	tik tok	93	meitu	98
youtube	89	instagram	93	인스타그램	98
spotify	87	google	91	네이버	94
giochi gratis	86	facebook	90	야놀자	93
messenger	86	音楽	89	배틀그라운드	92
giochi gratis nuovi 2018	85	出 会 い	85	cgv	90
snapchat	84	グーグル	84	여기어때	89
amazon	83	カメラ	83	instagram	87

As you can see, nearly all of these keywords are brand names, except for very generic terms such as ‘games’ and ‘music’. When working on your ASO, you want to make sure you pick the best potential keywords. Hopefully, AppTweak has a great Keyword Suggestion Tool to make sure you don’t miss any opportunity keyword.

Search Popularity and Keyword Localization

We went further in our analysis and compared the Search Popularity of the same keywords (or their equivalent in the local language) across the different countries. Again, we found some very curious insights.

We first looked at each country’s capital city and compared their Search Popularity. Not surprisingly, we found that the city with the highest Search Popularity, was always the capital of the country we were looking at. Other well-performing cities were either nearby cities or popular travel destinations for the local people. It looks like Paris is the favorite EU destination for the Japanese whereas Rome is more popular among the Europeans!

Country	Berlin	London	Madrid	Paris	Rome	Seoul	Tokyo
France	24	29	19	44	35	14	23
Germany	45	40	14	38	38	18	5
Italy	24	33	21	30	39	13	20
Japan	5	18	9	22	11	30	56
Korea	6	32	6	60	9	45	52
Spain	26	23	33	31	30	5	5
UK	26	41	12	30	36	16	20

We then did the same exercise with established car brands from these countries, and this time the results weren’t as easy to predict. Who would have thought that Toyota had the highest Search Popularity in the US and that BMW was the most popular car brand in Japan?

Country	Audi	BMW	Chevrolet	Fiat	Ford	Hyundai	Peugeot	Toyota	Volkswagen
France	40	44	5	17	28	16	40	29	38
Germany	53	54	5	20	39	28	29	28	45
Italy	41	45	10	30	40	19	31	28	35
Japan	35	48	5	7	5	5	9	35	21
Korea	16	52	7	5	6	12	6	9	5
US	42	47	31	23	47	37	19	48	37

These insights clearly show the importance of analyzing keyword volume across countries and avoiding preconceived ideas. Sometimes the results can surprise you. Keep that in mind when you start to localize your app’s metadata or when doing ASO in a new language.

→ Boost App Downloads with Localization: Step-by-Step Guide

Plural vs. Singular

Another great insight we can get with the Apple Search Popularity is by comparing plurals and singulars. You’d be surprised how the volume of a keyword can vary depending on if you’re using it in plural or singular. Again, this is essential in ASO, as you want to pick the keyword with the highest volume.

The most striking example is ‘games’ vs. ‘game’. We tested the words in their respective language and the difference in volume is amazing. What’s certain is that the plural always wins, so if you’re in gaming, make sure you use ‘games’ rather than ‘game’ in your ASO metadata!

The plural of ‘game’ is 1,5x more popular in all ASA countries than its singular (in their respective language)

Music has no boundaries

For those who have read up until here, we’ll end this article on a musical note. We compared the Search Popularity of the keyword ‘music’ in different languages and countries, here again, we found that the word with the highest volume in the country was the one in that country’s language. Nothing surprising up to here.

However, this data set clearly shows other curious insights. For instance, it is clear that the US is a very multilingual market. Whatever the language you’re using, the word ‘music’ has a Search Popularity above 5! It’s also evident that the Japanese are extremely fond of music. Both ‘music’ and ‘音楽’ (music in Japanese) are amongst the Top 20 most popular keyword of the country. Looks like they really do like karaoke!

Country	music	musica	musik	musique	음악	音楽
France	67	59	34	77	5	5
Germany	65	53	76	11	5	5
Italy	63	76	27	5	6	5
Japan	82	51	24	6	19	89
Korea	62	17	16	5	74	10
Spain	58	71	46	7	5	5
UK	75	38	33	10	5	5
US	77	50	44	24	20	9

When it comes to Europe, you’ll find the Europeans speak their neighbours language, and ‘music’ has a high Search Popularity in nearly any EU language.

→ Get further Search Popularity insights on our ASO Tool

Even more to come on AppTweak

As a conclusion, the Apple Search Popularity is a great indicator to give you an idea of the volume a keyword drives. It is an key metric to be used in your ASO routine.

Make sure you check the Search Popularity of the keywords you are currently using in your app’s metadata and replace low volume keywords by others with a better volume. Our ASO Tool can help you find high value keywords to fully optimise your app and boost its visibility.

Of course, we won’t stop there. Reactivity being one of our main priorities, we are already working hard to get our Search Ads Intelligence available in all ASA markets by the beginning of September.

This means that you will be able to check who is bidding on your app’s top organic keywords; that you can discover what are the top keywords your competitors are bidding on; and that you can monitor which apps are bidding on any given keyword along with their Share of Impression history.

→ Learn more about our Search Ads Intelligence Dashboard !

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