Services for the selection of keywords on the App Store: a comparative characteristic
Those who deal with ASO on an ongoing basis, and, God forbid, for different locations, he knows: this is not the case in which you can act on a whim. There are a lot of words in the dictionary, of course, but there are plenty of products on the market too, and the competition for the simplest, associative keys unfolds is serious. To balance the popularity of the query and the probability to break through to the first positions, a careful analysis of the situation in the relevant segment is needed.
Today, such an analysis is carried out by special systems that collect data from markets and, processing them, give an estimate of the effectiveness of a key in a numerical value. There are a lot of them, and in recent weeks our team has a need to revise the available options and select the most promising ones. Under the cut, you will find our impressions of working with ten instruments for ASO.
Let's start with a short background. On the App Store, we are not the first year and, accordingly, the idea of ​​“breaking the keys” came to us not for the first time. Initially, for all our ASO needs, we used the well-known Sensor Tower among the masses and still have not seen any reason to refuse it.
')
This is what the standard Sensor Tower screen looks like. As you can see, for each key, the system displays the following information: Traffic (estimate of the number of users sending the request), Difficulty (rating of the popularity of the request among other developers on the market), the number of applications that drop out on request, and the position of your application in the rating. In our opinion, this is quite enough to assess the chances of new keys and the effectiveness of old ones. On the Keyword Spy tab, you can see how things are going with competitors, and on the Keyword Suggestions tab, see the options generated by the system. Thus, the user gets everything that is needed for a full optimization cycle: he can make a preliminary list of keys, check their performance, select the most promising and, later, see if the application rises in the output.
And everything would be fine, but we began to increasingly encounter technical problems. The first calls started back in the times when we used only free accounts - then it could be attributed to the fact that we want too much from the default cut-down functionality, all the more so because problems only appeared with a heavy load. But even after switching to the paid tariff, the Sensor Tower soon began to produce old errors with increasing regularity. Multicomponent phrases were difficult, often had to enter them several times. At times, the system simply “lay down” and for a while did not react to stimuli in principle. And finally, on some localizations, the calculation aroused suspicions: one and those values ​​could be repeated time after time for a whole series of keys.
Communicating with the administration did not correct the situation, and we understood: it was time to see what else the market offers. Guided by our experience with the Sensor Tower, we were looking for services that could offer the following:
According to reviews, recommendations, as well as the availability of a demo version or a “free” tariff plan, we selected nine services in order to work with them personally and check for compliance with our requirements as well as for elementary convenience. Feedback for the listed criteria, we entered into a special table - at the end of the experiment, it acquired the following form:
[ full size ]
Already from this picture it is clear that which options suit us more and which ones are less. But I would like to tell a little more about each of the tools and the impression he left.
Appannie
The idea of ​​passing AppAnnie into the hands of optimization is, of course, tempting — the resource is quite solid, their reports have been read and used in their strategies, probably, everything. Opportunities for a free account are severely curtailed, but the page with the advantages of premium promises everything you can wish for: traffic, competitiveness and comparison of requests for the selection of the most effective ones. The Keyword Search tab also attracts blocked useful indicators like Estimated Downloads (estimated number of downloads). In general, the system is very similar to SensorTower, and the brand allows you to rely on high quality service.
One is bad - the prices are appropriate. Following the negotiations with the managers, AppAnnie headed our personal rating of the most expensive tools. Accordingly, it had to be postponed until better times.
Searchman
We resorted to the service of this service earlier, when there were no complaints to the Sensor Tower - this is a magic wand for cases when imagination or vocabulary is exhausted. SearchMan shamelessly communicates to competitors at each other, collecting data about the keys used and creating a common semantic field for applications of the same type, which can be accessed on the Keyword Library tab. Also, the service selects for you competitors and conducts a direct comparison of search queries and positions in the issue. In general, there are many opportunities to look at people and fit into a niche as carefully as possible.
The rest of SearchMan functionality, for the most part, corresponds to the usual set of us (traffic, competition, place in the ranking). Moreover, the service additionally simplifies the task for the optimizer by correlating traffic and competitiveness indicators in a special KEI indicator. But there is one unexpected omission: his list of countries is more than modest. Even the most expensive packages promise no more than twenty, and those who do not intend to pay much will have to be content with three - the United States, Britain and Japan. Unfortunately, this is a key moment for us, and we had to give up on the idea of ​​making this really rich and convenient tool the main one. But as an additional one, it will still serve us - the selection and comparison of keys here can be carried out even on a free account.
AppRankCorner
Rare completely free copy on our list. Against the background of competitors' quotations, such generosity is suspicious, and, sadly enough to admit, not baseless. In theory, AppRankCorner displays all the basic parameters (traffic analogues, chances of getting into the top, the number of applications outstanding on request), and even offers a bonus in the form of recommended keys. In fact, the service either does not work at all, or it works according to the mood - we have not managed to find a single word for which the indicators would be non-zero. There are no complaints about the recommendations, but there is little joy from them.
AppLyzer
AppLyzer evokes mixed feelings. On the one hand, the site is convenient, the interface is extremely well thought out - it’s a pleasure to work with it. Price categories are quite fractional; unlike other services, where, as a rule, two or three basic tariffs are presented, it is easier here to find the optimal point between the price / volume of services axes. In the paid version, the possibilities are compared with competitive products, the imagination draws something like a more compact SearchMan. In general, everything is for people ... except for banal indicators of traffic and competitiveness, which are simply not there. The service provides only and exclusively information about the position in the ratings of different countries and categories (with dynamics, charts and other valuable insights). Such an approach to data analysis also has a right to exist, but such a set of indicators seems insufficient to us - at least, it does not allow us to estimate how many users will come upon request.
Appfollow
Laconic and simple service with a rather limited functionality, which again is reduced to tracking the positions of the application for certain requests. It is proposed to evaluate the effectiveness of options by an atypical set of parameters: next to the number of competitive products and the current position in the list indicates the presence of a keyword in the title and subtitle. This, of course, has its own logic - it really affects the ranking - but still, such things are easier to check manually than, say, competitiveness. The site also has a tab called Comparison, which, in theory, allows you to compare yourself with competitors, but the comparison is made to a very limited circle of criteria lying on the surface (size, price, reviews, and so on).
At the same time, everything related to scaling and pricing is implemented very reasonably. Here we also have an economical system that allows you to “recruit” the necessary services and limits by adjusting the total amount. So, our team, which loves geographic scope and works on several projects at once, would have bought up about five and a half thousand a month, and some small studio with one main project and a verified list of foreign markets could easily keep within one and a half .
Appradar
The main inconvenience of the service is his insistent desire to break into your account in the Store and merge with it; it is comforting, however, that most of the functions associated with optimizing for markets can be used without it. In all other respects, Appradar makes a good impression: the screen is successfully divided into zones, so the list of requests is easy to edit, and the recommendations serve as unobtrusive prompts. No less sensibly organized is the tab with competitors whose keys are displayed in the format of a neat comparative tablet. The rating system, however, does not fully correspond to our usual one - besides the inevitable position in the rating and the number of applications, there is only one graph here - Popularity. But such a calculation is better than none at all.
And now about the sad, that is, about the price tags. Appradar puts very stringent restrictions on both the list of countries and the number of applications and keys for each. The cheapest tariff (cheap, I must say, there is very relative) allows only two products and five localizations, and in order to be able to process at least five applications at the same time, you will have to pay the maximum. By the way, the limit is set on the number of competitors that can be monitored, but here quotas are much more generous. In other words, this is an option for those to whom the quality is important and not too fundamentally the quantity - we, unfortunately, needed both.
Isodesk
A very rich, but also very disorderly set of functions - the more difficult it is to investigate it, since a part is blocked for “trial” users. Each key is evaluated in terms of not only the popularity and number of associated applications, but also its potential in Search Ads. You can get information about competitors on three different tabs, some of which contain additional information that is not presented on the main screen - for example, local analogue Difficulty. There are key offers that are available on click, but they are issued in small portions and in a separate window, which slows down the work. In short, a lot of things, but to say whether it will be convenient to work with the service on an ongoing basis is difficult. We were also embarrassed by some zero indicators - they did not predominate, as in the AppRankCorner, but did not coincide with what other services showed.
In the service packages there is no division according to the number of localizations, which was pleasantly surprised. The main difference is in the number of slots for products and keys, as well as not very critical additions to the functionality. However, according to the FAQ, pricing plans at reasonable prices will suit only those who regularly update one product - this, together with the listed shortcomings, confirmed us in the decision to hold back the money.
Mobile Action
The indicators practically duplicate the Sensortower, with minor, mostly nominal exceptions - this immediately placed us to the instrument. In the ASO block, all the points that I would like to see are clearly highlighted: assessment, tracking, recommendations and competitors, plus an addition in the form of an interpreter for localizations (however, the quality of the translation in the demo version was not tested). Quantitative restrictions are humane, even in the lowest price category, the country is almost at full strength.
This service met all the requirements that we listed at the beginning of the article, so we tested it with a special predilection. In general, the team was very pleased: the calculation is done quickly and without failures, both for words and for phrases. Employees noted the qualitative selection of competitors and convenient sorting recommendations. The advantages of the interface and management were also found: recommendations were successfully built into the Research window, the ability to delete the entire list of keys was very popular at once. An unexpected minus - the service is very chatty, constantly pop-up dialog windows quickly begin to act on your nerves.
Apptweak
With Apptweak, we were lucky to agree on a short trial period with access to the full range of functions - without irony, lucky, the service was good. The indicators, again, correlate well with those offered by the Sensor Tower, and the correctness of the calculation does not cause concern. It also features an additional parameter KEI, which we have already seen in SearchMan. The localization has several destiny, it seemed sufficient even to us; There are no restrictions on the number of applications, and on the number of keys, the reserve is quite decent. In general, the initial inspection of Apptweak was no problem.
Then the agitated test began, with real keys and the work of the entire ASO team. The feedback, which was collected after a week-long trial, was more mixed than in the case of Mobile Action - there were also negative reviews and praises. Overall, the tool seemed slightly overloaded and not too intuitive. It lacks compactness: it is often shared that it would be more convenient to have on one screen (for example, localization or competitors). There are, however, successful solutions - the already mentioned option of quick deletion, unloading, counting characters in the string with keys. As for the main functionality, the quality of the assessment was considered acceptable, although not without failures, especially with regard to the Rank parameter and multi-component phrases.
Summarizing:
In general and in general, solutions available on the market are diverse. We evaluated them on the basis of our own preferences, but tried to highlight different aspects, so that people with other priorities could also take a note of something. We will be glad to hear about your experience with these or other services and supplement the list with recommendations.
Today, such an analysis is carried out by special systems that collect data from markets and, processing them, give an estimate of the effectiveness of a key in a numerical value. There are a lot of them, and in recent weeks our team has a need to revise the available options and select the most promising ones. Under the cut, you will find our impressions of working with ten instruments for ASO.
Let's start with a short background. On the App Store, we are not the first year and, accordingly, the idea of ​​“breaking the keys” came to us not for the first time. Initially, for all our ASO needs, we used the well-known Sensor Tower among the masses and still have not seen any reason to refuse it.
')
This is what the standard Sensor Tower screen looks like. As you can see, for each key, the system displays the following information: Traffic (estimate of the number of users sending the request), Difficulty (rating of the popularity of the request among other developers on the market), the number of applications that drop out on request, and the position of your application in the rating. In our opinion, this is quite enough to assess the chances of new keys and the effectiveness of old ones. On the Keyword Spy tab, you can see how things are going with competitors, and on the Keyword Suggestions tab, see the options generated by the system. Thus, the user gets everything that is needed for a full optimization cycle: he can make a preliminary list of keys, check their performance, select the most promising and, later, see if the application rises in the output.
And everything would be fine, but we began to increasingly encounter technical problems. The first calls started back in the times when we used only free accounts - then it could be attributed to the fact that we want too much from the default cut-down functionality, all the more so because problems only appeared with a heavy load. But even after switching to the paid tariff, the Sensor Tower soon began to produce old errors with increasing regularity. Multicomponent phrases were difficult, often had to enter them several times. At times, the system simply “lay down” and for a while did not react to stimuli in principle. And finally, on some localizations, the calculation aroused suspicions: one and those values ​​could be repeated time after time for a whole series of keys.
Communicating with the administration did not correct the situation, and we understood: it was time to see what else the market offers. Guided by our experience with the Sensor Tower, we were looking for services that could offer the following:
- Understandable and effective key evaluation system
- A wide range of localizations - we work with different countries
- Tips from the recommendation system
- Ability to select keys with an eye on competitors: their requests, positions in the rating
- The ability to consider a large number of keys (ideally, several hundred) for several applications at once (ideally, about a dozen)
- Not too exorbitant price.
According to reviews, recommendations, as well as the availability of a demo version or a “free” tariff plan, we selected nine services in order to work with them personally and check for compliance with our requirements as well as for elementary convenience. Feedback for the listed criteria, we entered into a special table - at the end of the experiment, it acquired the following form:
[ full size ]
Already from this picture it is clear that which options suit us more and which ones are less. But I would like to tell a little more about each of the tools and the impression he left.
Appannie
The idea of ​​passing AppAnnie into the hands of optimization is, of course, tempting — the resource is quite solid, their reports have been read and used in their strategies, probably, everything. Opportunities for a free account are severely curtailed, but the page with the advantages of premium promises everything you can wish for: traffic, competitiveness and comparison of requests for the selection of the most effective ones. The Keyword Search tab also attracts blocked useful indicators like Estimated Downloads (estimated number of downloads). In general, the system is very similar to SensorTower, and the brand allows you to rely on high quality service.
One is bad - the prices are appropriate. Following the negotiations with the managers, AppAnnie headed our personal rating of the most expensive tools. Accordingly, it had to be postponed until better times.
Searchman
We resorted to the service of this service earlier, when there were no complaints to the Sensor Tower - this is a magic wand for cases when imagination or vocabulary is exhausted. SearchMan shamelessly communicates to competitors at each other, collecting data about the keys used and creating a common semantic field for applications of the same type, which can be accessed on the Keyword Library tab. Also, the service selects for you competitors and conducts a direct comparison of search queries and positions in the issue. In general, there are many opportunities to look at people and fit into a niche as carefully as possible.
The rest of SearchMan functionality, for the most part, corresponds to the usual set of us (traffic, competition, place in the ranking). Moreover, the service additionally simplifies the task for the optimizer by correlating traffic and competitiveness indicators in a special KEI indicator. But there is one unexpected omission: his list of countries is more than modest. Even the most expensive packages promise no more than twenty, and those who do not intend to pay much will have to be content with three - the United States, Britain and Japan. Unfortunately, this is a key moment for us, and we had to give up on the idea of ​​making this really rich and convenient tool the main one. But as an additional one, it will still serve us - the selection and comparison of keys here can be carried out even on a free account.
AppRankCorner
Rare completely free copy on our list. Against the background of competitors' quotations, such generosity is suspicious, and, sadly enough to admit, not baseless. In theory, AppRankCorner displays all the basic parameters (traffic analogues, chances of getting into the top, the number of applications outstanding on request), and even offers a bonus in the form of recommended keys. In fact, the service either does not work at all, or it works according to the mood - we have not managed to find a single word for which the indicators would be non-zero. There are no complaints about the recommendations, but there is little joy from them.
AppLyzer
AppLyzer evokes mixed feelings. On the one hand, the site is convenient, the interface is extremely well thought out - it’s a pleasure to work with it. Price categories are quite fractional; unlike other services, where, as a rule, two or three basic tariffs are presented, it is easier here to find the optimal point between the price / volume of services axes. In the paid version, the possibilities are compared with competitive products, the imagination draws something like a more compact SearchMan. In general, everything is for people ... except for banal indicators of traffic and competitiveness, which are simply not there. The service provides only and exclusively information about the position in the ratings of different countries and categories (with dynamics, charts and other valuable insights). Such an approach to data analysis also has a right to exist, but such a set of indicators seems insufficient to us - at least, it does not allow us to estimate how many users will come upon request.
Appfollow
Laconic and simple service with a rather limited functionality, which again is reduced to tracking the positions of the application for certain requests. It is proposed to evaluate the effectiveness of options by an atypical set of parameters: next to the number of competitive products and the current position in the list indicates the presence of a keyword in the title and subtitle. This, of course, has its own logic - it really affects the ranking - but still, such things are easier to check manually than, say, competitiveness. The site also has a tab called Comparison, which, in theory, allows you to compare yourself with competitors, but the comparison is made to a very limited circle of criteria lying on the surface (size, price, reviews, and so on).
At the same time, everything related to scaling and pricing is implemented very reasonably. Here we also have an economical system that allows you to “recruit” the necessary services and limits by adjusting the total amount. So, our team, which loves geographic scope and works on several projects at once, would have bought up about five and a half thousand a month, and some small studio with one main project and a verified list of foreign markets could easily keep within one and a half .
Appradar
The main inconvenience of the service is his insistent desire to break into your account in the Store and merge with it; it is comforting, however, that most of the functions associated with optimizing for markets can be used without it. In all other respects, Appradar makes a good impression: the screen is successfully divided into zones, so the list of requests is easy to edit, and the recommendations serve as unobtrusive prompts. No less sensibly organized is the tab with competitors whose keys are displayed in the format of a neat comparative tablet. The rating system, however, does not fully correspond to our usual one - besides the inevitable position in the rating and the number of applications, there is only one graph here - Popularity. But such a calculation is better than none at all.
And now about the sad, that is, about the price tags. Appradar puts very stringent restrictions on both the list of countries and the number of applications and keys for each. The cheapest tariff (cheap, I must say, there is very relative) allows only two products and five localizations, and in order to be able to process at least five applications at the same time, you will have to pay the maximum. By the way, the limit is set on the number of competitors that can be monitored, but here quotas are much more generous. In other words, this is an option for those to whom the quality is important and not too fundamentally the quantity - we, unfortunately, needed both.
Isodesk
A very rich, but also very disorderly set of functions - the more difficult it is to investigate it, since a part is blocked for “trial” users. Each key is evaluated in terms of not only the popularity and number of associated applications, but also its potential in Search Ads. You can get information about competitors on three different tabs, some of which contain additional information that is not presented on the main screen - for example, local analogue Difficulty. There are key offers that are available on click, but they are issued in small portions and in a separate window, which slows down the work. In short, a lot of things, but to say whether it will be convenient to work with the service on an ongoing basis is difficult. We were also embarrassed by some zero indicators - they did not predominate, as in the AppRankCorner, but did not coincide with what other services showed.
In the service packages there is no division according to the number of localizations, which was pleasantly surprised. The main difference is in the number of slots for products and keys, as well as not very critical additions to the functionality. However, according to the FAQ, pricing plans at reasonable prices will suit only those who regularly update one product - this, together with the listed shortcomings, confirmed us in the decision to hold back the money.
Mobile Action
The indicators practically duplicate the Sensortower, with minor, mostly nominal exceptions - this immediately placed us to the instrument. In the ASO block, all the points that I would like to see are clearly highlighted: assessment, tracking, recommendations and competitors, plus an addition in the form of an interpreter for localizations (however, the quality of the translation in the demo version was not tested). Quantitative restrictions are humane, even in the lowest price category, the country is almost at full strength.
This service met all the requirements that we listed at the beginning of the article, so we tested it with a special predilection. In general, the team was very pleased: the calculation is done quickly and without failures, both for words and for phrases. Employees noted the qualitative selection of competitors and convenient sorting recommendations. The advantages of the interface and management were also found: recommendations were successfully built into the Research window, the ability to delete the entire list of keys was very popular at once. An unexpected minus - the service is very chatty, constantly pop-up dialog windows quickly begin to act on your nerves.
Apptweak
With Apptweak, we were lucky to agree on a short trial period with access to the full range of functions - without irony, lucky, the service was good. The indicators, again, correlate well with those offered by the Sensor Tower, and the correctness of the calculation does not cause concern. It also features an additional parameter KEI, which we have already seen in SearchMan. The localization has several destiny, it seemed sufficient even to us; There are no restrictions on the number of applications, and on the number of keys, the reserve is quite decent. In general, the initial inspection of Apptweak was no problem.
Then the agitated test began, with real keys and the work of the entire ASO team. The feedback, which was collected after a week-long trial, was more mixed than in the case of Mobile Action - there were also negative reviews and praises. Overall, the tool seemed slightly overloaded and not too intuitive. It lacks compactness: it is often shared that it would be more convenient to have on one screen (for example, localization or competitors). There are, however, successful solutions - the already mentioned option of quick deletion, unloading, counting characters in the string with keys. As for the main functionality, the quality of the assessment was considered acceptable, although not without failures, especially with regard to the Rank parameter and multi-component phrases.
Summarizing:
- The most promising of the reviewed services seemed to us Mobile Action and Apptweak: both combine an effective assessment framework, competitor analysis and an extensive list of localizations with adequate rates and good usability. Those who, like us, find the system adopted in the Sensor Tower efficient, are likely to be most comfortable with these sites.
- Appfollow and Applyzer offer an alternative approach, which is based on monitoring the position in the ratings and leaves the job of analyzing this information on the optimizer’s conscience. We prefer services where specially trained algorithms do this, but if such a scheme suits you, both tools implement it at a good level.
- We did not find reliable completely free solutions, but we were convinced that some free accounts on paid services adequately cope with basic operations for a small circle of applications. These include Searchman, Mobile Action and, to a lesser extent, Asodesk.
- The ability to draw ideas from competitors or a recommendation system is, in our opinion, a significant advantage. The best results, according to our employees, in this regard were shown by Searchman, Mobile Action and Apptweak. If we are not talking about the selection, but about the comparison of positions by keys, the Appradar is particularly convenient for the presentation format.
In general and in general, solutions available on the market are diverse. We evaluated them on the basis of our own preferences, but tried to highlight different aspects, so that people with other priorities could also take a note of something. We will be glad to hear about your experience with these or other services and supplement the list with recommendations.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/353938/
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