App Store Optimization: What Actually Moves the Needle on Google Play and the App Store
· 6 min read · Mona Technologies
App Store Optimization gets treated like SEO's poor cousin, a checklist of keywords to stuff into a title and hope for the best. That approach wastes effort because Apple and Google index different fields with different weight, and neither platform ranks apps the way Google Search ranks web pages. If you're spending money to build an app, you should know exactly which five or six fields determine whether anyone finds it, and which ones are decoration.
Two stores, two indexing models
On the App Store, only a handful of fields are indexed for search: the app name (30 characters), the subtitle (30 characters), the 100-character keyword field, in-app purchase names, in-app event titles, and screenshot caption text. Your full description and promotional text are not indexed at all. Apple explicitly separates persuasion copy from search copy. That means a beautifully written 4,000-character description does nothing for discoverability if your name and subtitle are generic.
Google Play works differently. It indexes your title, short description, and long description together, and keyword placement in the title carries more weight than anywhere else, with terms near the start of the title mattering more than terms buried at the end. Google has never published a ranking formula, but its own Play Console guidance is explicit that your title must be unique, avoid generic terms, and stay under 30 characters, and that description text is what helps the algorithm match your app to a search query.
- App Store: name plus subtitle plus 100-char keyword field are indexed; description and promo text are not
- Google Play: title plus short description plus long description are all indexed together
- App Store keyword field is invisible to users but read by the algorithm, so don't waste it repeating your app name
- Google Play title should front-load your one or two most important search terms
Stop optimizing for rank and start optimizing for conversion
Ranking higher for a search term is worthless if the person who finds you doesn't tap install. Both platforms let you run controlled experiments on your listing, Apple's Product Page Optimization and Google's Store Listing Experiments, where you can A/B test icons, screenshots, and short descriptions against real traffic split evenly between variants. This is the highest-leverage ASO work most founders skip because it feels like a developer task rather than a marketing one. A listing that ranks third and converts 40% of visitors beats a listing that ranks first and converts 15%, every time, because install volume is rank times conversion, not rank alone.
The first three screenshots do most of the work. Users scroll past a handful before deciding, so your first screenshot should communicate the core value proposition without relying on the user having read anything else, not a login screen, not a splash screen, and not a screenshot that only makes sense once you already understand the app.
Where to actually spend your keyword budget
Founders often assume broad, high-volume terms are the prize. They're rarely worth chasing early. A generic term like fitness tracker has enormous competition from apps with years of install history and review volume, signals you cannot out-optimize your way past. Specific, intent-heavy phrases that match what your actual target user searches convert better and rank faster because you're competing against fewer, weaker listings.
- Mine your own app reviews and support tickets for the words real users use to describe your app
- Check what competitors rank for by searching their exact category and reading who shows up
- Use the App Store's 100-character keyword field for singular forms only, since Apple already matches plurals, so don't waste characters repeating them
- On Google Play, put your best one or two keywords in the title itself, not just the description, since title terms are weighted higher
Ratings and reviews are a ranking input, not just social proof
Both stores factor recent rating volume and velocity into ranking, not just your all-time average. An app with a 4.8 average built from 40 reviews two years ago signals less to the algorithm than one with a 4.3 average and steady reviews arriving every week. This is why in-app review prompts, timed to a moment right after a user completes something successfully rather than the first time they open the app, matter more for discoverability than most founders assume. A prompt fired on first launch, before the user has any reason to feel positive, reliably produces worse ratings and gets ignored or dismissed more often. Timing is the whole game here.
The short version
ASO is not a one-time keyword list. It's an ongoing loop of indexed-field placement, screenshot testing, and review-prompt timing, and the two stores reward different inputs. Get your app name, subtitle, and keyword field on the App Store, or title and descriptions on Google Play, right first, since those are the only fields either algorithm actually reads for search matching. Then shift effort to conversion: screenshots, first-run experience, and review timing decide whether the traffic you've earned turns into installs.