ASO specialists are well aware: the App Store Title field carries the most weight in the algorithm’s eyes. Keywords included in the title have a significantly greater impact on search performance compared to the same keywords placed in the Keywords field. In fact, the same keyword can produce different ranking results depending on whether it’s in the title or the keywords field.
But does this still hold true today, especially given Apple’s algorithm is constantly evolving?
Our RadASO team decided to polish up on our understanding of this phenomenon by conducting an in-house study.
We selected three apps — Nicegram, Me QR, and OTOMOTO. We moved specific search terms from the Keywords field into the Title to assess how this shift would impact their rankings after the release.
OTOMOTO is a local app, while Nicegram and Me QR are designed for a global audience. We monitored ranking changes across multiple segments: Top-50, Top-10, and Top-5 results.
Locale: English (U.S.), indexed globally
Search terms moved: “x” and “messenger”
Release date: The 19th of May
Search term: “messenger”
Positions improved for 8 search terms, and 4 new ones were indexed. Most of the remaining long-tail search terms were already present in the Keywords field, except for “kids” and “life.”
We observed improved rankings for 7 search terms and indexing for 5 new ones. Notably, terms such as “signal,” “private,” and “viber” were not previously included in the app’s metadata.
We recorded growth for 2 search terms and indexing for 1 new term. The term “Facebook” was not included in the metadata.
We observed ranking improvements for 14 search terms and indexing for 2 new ones. Terms like “session,” “skred,” “threema,” “kik,” “unseen,” “msn,” “life,” “lite,” and “zangi” were not present in the metadata—indicating that nearly two-thirds of the long-tail search terms had not been previously targeted.
We saw growth for 1 search term and indexing for 1 new term.
We saw an improvement by 1 position for an existing search term and indexing for 2 new terms. The keyword “Facebook” was not present in the metadata.
Rankings improved for 1 search term, and 4 new terms were indexed. Notably, “Facebook” and “kids” were not included in the metadata.
Rankings improved for 11 search terms, with 7 new terms indexed. Notably, keywords such as “zangi,” “botim,” “lite,” “kid,” “kids,” “update,” “fb,” and “facebook” were previously absent from the metadata — revealing that about half of the long-tail search terms were newly discovered.
While we could analyze each country individually, the examples above provide sufficient insights for our conclusions.
Search term: “x”
We observed growth for 3 search terms and indexing for 6 new ones. Notably, terms like “twitter,” “max10,” and “mạng xã hội” were absent from the metadata, although “twitter” appeared in a cross-locale context.
We saw growth for 3 search terms and indexing for 8 new ones. Keywords such as “Twitter,” “video,” “xml,” “com,” “m,” and “von” were not included in the metadata.
Rankings improved for 2 search terms. The keyword “m” was not included in the metadata.
We observed growth for 7 search terms and indexing for 2 new ones. Keywords such as “Corp,” «برنامج”,» “منصة”, “تلگرام» and “twitter” were absent from the metadata.
Growth was seen for 1 search term, with 1 new term indexed. The keyword “Телеграм” was not included in the metadata but appeared in a cross-locale context.
Growth occurred for 1 search term, with 1 new term indexed. The keyword “Twitter” was not present in the metadata but appeared in a cross-locale context.
Growth was observed for 1 search term, with 2 new terms indexed. The keyword “Twitter” was covered in a cross-locale, whereas “wallet” was missing from the metadata.
Rankings improved for 1 search term, with 2 new terms indexed. The keyword “Twitter” was present in a cross-locale context.
Locale: Vietnamese (for the Vietnam region)
Moved search term: “mã vạch”
Release date: The 28th of May
Indexed for 3 new long-tail search terms. However, rankings for two terms dropped, and one term completely disappeared (OUT).Terms such as “tải,” “phần,” “mềm,” “ứng,” and “dụng” were absent in the metadata.
Locale: Polish (for Poland)
Moved search term: “samochody”
Release date: The 7th of May
Ranking improved by 13 positions following the release.
The Title field remains the most important factor influencing an app’s ranking in search results.
In all tested cases, moving search terms into the Title had a positive impact. Additionally, when a moved search term was part of a longer phrase, we observed two scenarios: indexing of phrases where parts appeared in cross-locales (which is unusual since keyword combinations are usually formed within a single locale), and cases where parts of the phrases were entirely missing from the metadata.
For search phrases fully included in the Title field, we observed exclusively positive ranking improvements.
Even more insights from ASO & UA pros in ASO Busters on Discord!
