How the App Store Actually Ranks Your App: Title, Subtitle, and Keyword Field Explained

Apple gives you three text fields that directly influence search rankings: the title (30 characters), the subtitle (30 characters), and the keyword field (100 characters). That's 160 characters in total to tell the App Store algorithm what your app does and who it's for. Most developers fill in the title with their app name, write a vague subtitle, and stuff the keyword field with comma-separated guesses. The result is a metadata setup that looks complete but performs poorly. Understanding what each field actually does — and how they interact — is the single highest-leverage ASO task you can do as an indie developer.

The Title: Your Most Powerful Ranking Signal

The app title carries the most weight in Apple's search algorithm. A keyword placed in the title will rank faster and rank higher than the same keyword placed anywhere else. That's why you should treat the characters after your brand name as premium ranking real estate, not an afterthought. The format that tends to work best is: Brand Name – Core Keyword. For example, if your app is called 'Fokus' and it's a Pomodoro timer, 'Fokus – Pomodoro Timer' will outperform just 'Fokus' for the query 'pomodoro timer' almost immediately after going live. You have 30 characters total. Your brand name might take 5–12 of those, which leaves you 18–25 characters for a meaningful keyword phrase. Use them.

• Keep your brand name as short as practical — every extra character is a keyword character lost.
• Use a dash or colon to separate the brand from the keyword phrase: it reads naturally and Apple parses it cleanly.
• Pick the single most important keyword phrase for the title — not two, not three. One clear phrase.
• Avoid articles like 'a', 'the', 'for' in the title; Apple ignores them and they waste space.

The Subtitle: The Field Most Developers Underuse

The subtitle is indexed by Apple's search algorithm with nearly the same weight as the title. Yet most apps either leave it blank, use it as a tagline ('The best app for productivity!'), or repeat words already in the title. All three approaches are wasted opportunities. Your subtitle should contain your second and third most important keyword phrases — terms that didn't fit in the title. If your title covers 'pomodoro timer', your subtitle might target 'focus timer & time tracker'. That's two additional keyword phrases in one field, both indexed, neither repeated from the title.

Never repeat a keyword across your title, subtitle, and keyword field. Apple indexes each word once — duplication doesn't boost ranking, it just wastes characters.

The Keyword Field: 100 Characters of Pure Signal

The keyword field is invisible to users but fully indexed by Apple. It's 100 characters of comma-separated terms (no spaces after commas saves you characters). A few rules that aren't obvious until you've spent time with the algorithm:

• Don't repeat any word that already appears in your title or subtitle — it genuinely doesn't help and costs you space for new terms.
• Don't include your own app name, your competitor's app names, or Apple trademark terms — Apple will reject the metadata or simply ignore those terms.
• Use single words and short two-word phrases rather than long phrases. Apple constructs combinations itself. 'focus,timer,productivity' covers 'focus timer', 'productivity timer', and 'focus productivity' without you writing each phrase out.
• Plural vs singular: include the form that looks less natural in a sentence — Apple usually indexes both, but when in doubt, test singular and see what autocomplete surfaces.
• Commas separate terms; spaces within a term are fine and count as one term. 'time tracker' as a two-word entry is valid.

How the Three Fields Work Together

Think of the three fields as a single 160-character keyword pool with a hierarchy. Title keywords rank best, subtitle keywords rank well, keyword field keywords rank but more weakly. Your job is to assign your highest-volume, most relevant terms to the title, push the next tier into the subtitle, and fill the keyword field with the long tail — lower-volume terms, synonyms, and use-case descriptors that real users type but that wouldn't fit naturally in visible copy. A coherent strategy across all three fields will consistently outperform a title-only effort or a keyword field stuffed with every term you could think of.

A Practical Workflow for Getting This Right

Before you write a single character of metadata, do your keyword research. Search your category in the App Store and note what autocomplete suggests. Look at the titles and subtitles of your top three competitors — those are the terms that are working in your niche right now. Build a ranked list of 20–30 candidate keywords, estimate their relevance and competition, then slot the best into title, subtitle, and keyword field in order of priority.

• Step 1: List 20–30 candidate keywords using App Store autocomplete and competitor title analysis.
• Step 2: Score each keyword by relevance to your app and by competition (how strong are the top-ranking apps for that term?).
• Step 3: Assign your top keyword phrase to the title, alongside your brand name.
• Step 4: Assign your next one or two keyword phrases to the subtitle — make sure it reads like a real sentence or benefit statement.
• Step 5: Fill the remaining 100 keyword field characters with single words and short phrases from the rest of your list, no repeats.
• Step 6: After each App Store update (roughly every few weeks), check your ranking positions and swap out underperforming keyword field terms.

Appolyn handles this process end-to-end — it surfaces keyword suggestions, flags duplicates across your fields, and lets you publish updated metadata to every locale in one click rather than copy-pasting through App Store Connect for each language individually. If you're managing more than one or two locales, that alone saves a significant amount of time per update cycle.

The One Mistake That Cancels Everything Else

The most common metadata mistake isn't bad keyword research — it's inconsistency across locales. Developers optimise their English (US) metadata carefully, then leave every other language set to a machine-translated version of the original listing that was written before they understood any of this. Each locale is indexed independently. A German user searching in the German App Store sees results ranked on German metadata. If your German title is a literal translation of a brand tagline rather than a keyword-rich phrase, you're invisible to that audience regardless of how good your English metadata is. Treat each locale as its own ranking opportunity, not just a translation task.