u/aso2dev

Quick note first: I run a small ASO tool (Applyra), and that's where this data comes from, I stare at a lot of store listings. Just sharing the patterns because they're useful.

Over the last few months I've gone through a few hundred indie apps, mostly stuff people posted here or on X for feedback, roughly half iOS half Android. What got me was how repetitive it is, and how mechanical the fixes are once you stop thinking "marketing copy" and start thinking "indexed fields with rules". This isn't generic "optimize your metadata" advice. Every point below is a specific field, what each store does with it, and the fix. About 80% of the apps I look at get at least three of these wrong.

1. Half the title is empty (~70%). The title is the single heaviest ranking signal on both stores, weighted above everything else you write. You get 30 characters and most apps use a third of it. Concrete one I see constantly: an app whose entire title is "BudgetX". Seven of 30 characters, and it ranks for exactly one thing, its own brand. Same app titled "BudgetX: Expense Tracker" picks up expense and tracker for free and still fits in 30. Brand first, then your main keyword, then fill the rest.

2. Wasting or duplicating the second field (~60%). iOS subtitle (30 chars) and Android short description (80 chars) are both indexed and both heavily weighted. Two failures here. First, fluff like "Your daily companion", that ranks for nothing, nobody searches it. Second, the one people miss: on iOS, Apple reads your title, subtitle and keyword field as one combined pool and counts each word once. So repeating a title keyword in the subtitle is dead space. Use it for a fresh set of terms, not a rephrase. On Android the short description is also the first line users actually read, so make it keyword-rich and readable, e.g. "Track expenses, set budgets, save money".

3. Misunderstanding the description (~50%). iOS: the long description is NOT indexed. Zero effect on search rank, it only does conversion work once someone's already on the page. People burn a full day tuning 4,000 characters that move nothing. On iOS only three fields rank you: title, subtitle, keyword field. Android: the exact opposite, the description IS indexed and density matters (aim ~3-5% for your main term).

4. iOS keyword field used wrong (~45%). 100 characters, comma separated, no spaces. The classics: spaces after commas (across 20+ keywords that's 10-15% of the field gone), repeating words already in your title or subtitle (again, each word counts once across all of it), and writing phrases instead of singles, because "budget,tracker" beats "budget tracker", Apple recombines singles into every permutation itself. And don't spend characters on your brand name, your category, or stop words like "the" and "app". Apple already indexes those.

5. Android keyword stuffing (~25%). The opposite failure, usually from people who just learned the description is indexed and overcorrect. Same keyword 50 times, a raw keyword dump at the bottom, one sentence rewritten six ways. It's a double loss: Google's classifier demotes obviously unnatural density, and the unreadable copy kills your conversion at the same time. Hit your keyword naturally a few times, land around 3-5%, stop.

6. Skipping localization (~55%). The free traffic almost nobody touches. iOS: each storefront indexes at least two locales, so the keywords in your primary English listing (UK or US) already rank you in nearly every storefront in the world, with Canada being the main English market that needs its own. And every extra localization is its own indexed title/subtitle/keyword field, with keywords NOT combined across locales, so adding a language is a clean way to index a fresh batch of terms. Android is different: an English-only listing still shows up to other-language users (Google falls back to your default and can auto-translate), it just won't rank for searches in those languages. Localizing Spanish, Portuguese, German or French is how you get indexed for their search terms, and an LLM is fine for the keyword research.

7. Chasing keywords you can't win (~65%)! "Photo editor", "meditation", "fitness tracker", not happening with 50 downloads and a 4.2 against incumbents with 8-figure budgets. Difficulty scales with the leaders' download velocity and ratings, not just search volume, so a "low volume" term can be wide open while a popular one is sealed. Go long tail where you can actually place: "vintage photo filter", "meditation for anxiety", "retro film camera". Rank for ten of those, build velocity and reviews, then earn your way up to the head terms. You climb, you don't teleport.

8. Changing five things and tracking none (~80%). The big one. People tweak the listing, see nothing in three days, call ASO a scam, quit. Two problems: keywords take 2-4 weeks to settle (Apple's reindex is slow), so they bail right before it lands, and changing five things at once means a rank move tells you nothing about which change caused it. Change one or two variables at a time, log what and when, give it a full cycle.

The pattern I keep landing on: the apps that win aren't doing anything secret. They treat the listing as a set of indexed fields with rules and work them deliberately, while everyone else writes marketing copy and hopes. The bar really is that low, which is the optimistic read.

Quick note first: I run a small ASO tool (Applyra), and that's where this data comes from, I stare at a lot of store listings. Just sharing the patterns because they're useful.

Over the last few months I've gone through a few hundred indie apps, mostly stuff people posted here or on X for feedback, roughly half iOS half Android. What got me was how repetitive it is, and how mechanical the fixes are once you stop thinking "marketing copy" and start thinking "indexed fields with rules". This isn't generic "optimize your metadata" advice. Every point below is a specific field, what each store does with it, and the fix. About 80% of the apps I look at get at least three of these wrong.

1. Half the title is empty (~70%). The title is the single heaviest ranking signal on both stores, weighted above everything else you write. You get 30 characters and most apps use a third of it. Concrete one I see constantly: an app whose entire title is "BudgetX". Seven of 30 characters, and it ranks for exactly one thing, its own brand. Same app titled "BudgetX: Expense Tracker" picks up expense and tracker for free and still fits in 30. Brand first, then your main keyword, then fill the rest.

2. Wasting or duplicating the second field (~60%). iOS subtitle (30 chars) and Android short description (80 chars) are both indexed and both heavily weighted. Two failures here. First, fluff like "Your daily companion", that ranks for nothing, nobody searches it. Second, the one people miss: on iOS, Apple reads your title, subtitle and keyword field as one combined pool and counts each word once. So repeating a title keyword in the subtitle is dead space. Use it for a fresh set of terms, not a rephrase. On Android the short description is also the first line users actually read, so make it keyword-rich and readable, e.g. "Track expenses, set budgets, save money".

3. Misunderstanding the description (~50%). iOS: the long description is NOT indexed. Zero effect on search rank, it only does conversion work once someone's already on the page. People burn a full day tuning 4,000 characters that move nothing. On iOS only three fields rank you: title, subtitle, keyword field. Android: the exact opposite, the description IS indexed and density matters (aim ~3-5% for your main term).

4. iOS keyword field used wrong (~45%). 100 characters, comma separated, no spaces. The classics: spaces after commas (across 20+ keywords that's 10-15% of the field gone), repeating words already in your title or subtitle (again, each word counts once across all of it), and writing phrases instead of singles, because "budget,tracker" beats "budget tracker", Apple recombines singles into every permutation itself. And don't spend characters on your brand name, your category, or stop words like "the" and "app". Apple already indexes those.

5. Android keyword stuffing (~25%). The opposite failure, usually from people who just learned the description is indexed and overcorrect. Same keyword 50 times, a raw keyword dump at the bottom, one sentence rewritten six ways. It's a double loss: Google's classifier demotes obviously unnatural density, and the unreadable copy kills your conversion at the same time. Hit your keyword naturally a few times, land around 3-5%, stop.

6. Skipping localization (~55%). The free traffic almost nobody touches. iOS: each storefront indexes at least two locales, so the keywords in your primary English listing (UK or US) already rank you in nearly every storefront in the world, with Canada being the main English market that needs its own. And every extra localization is its own indexed title/subtitle/keyword field, with keywords NOT combined across locales, so adding a language is a clean way to index a fresh batch of terms. Android is different: an English-only listing still shows up to other-language users (Google falls back to your default and can auto-translate), it just won't rank for searches in those languages. Localizing Spanish, Portuguese, German or French is how you get indexed for their search terms, and an LLM is fine for the keyword research.

7. Chasing keywords you can't win (~65%)! "Photo editor", "meditation", "fitness tracker", not happening with 50 downloads and a 4.2 against incumbents with 8-figure budgets. Difficulty scales with the leaders' download velocity and ratings, not just search volume, so a "low volume" term can be wide open while a popular one is sealed. Go long tail where you can actually place: "vintage photo filter", "meditation for anxiety", "retro film camera". Rank for ten of those, build velocity and reviews, then earn your way up to the head terms. You climb, you don't teleport.

8. Changing five things and tracking none (~80%). The big one. People tweak the listing, see nothing in three days, call ASO a scam, quit. Two problems: keywords take 2-4 weeks to settle (Apple's reindex is slow), so they bail right before it lands, and changing five things at once means a rank move tells you nothing about which change caused it. Change one or two variables at a time, log what and when, give it a full cycle.

The pattern I keep landing on: the apps that win aren't doing anything secret. They treat the listing as a set of indexed fields with rules and work them deliberately, while everyone else writes marketing copy and hopes. The bar really is that low, which is the optimistic read.