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ASOGrade vs. DIY Keyword Spreadsheets

What spreadsheet-based ASO does well and where it stalls

You're doing the research by hand.

A spreadsheet holds the list but can't tell you which terms are winnable — that number has to come from the live ranking set, and it changes daily.

Running App Store keyword research through a spreadsheet — collecting candidates, manually checking each one in the App Store or via a free tool, recording scores, sorting and filtering — is a legitimate approach. It is disciplined, repeatable, and free beyond the time investment.

Many indie developers and small studios manage their ASO this way and get good results. The question is not whether spreadsheet-based research works, but at what point the time cost and data freshness limitations make a dedicated tool the better option.

What this approach does well

A spreadsheet research workflow forces you to be systematic. You're documenting your candidate list, your scoring criteria, your selections, and your rationale. That documentation is valuable for team communication, for client reporting if you're a freelancer, and for your own memory of why you made specific choices.

It also works with any data source — you can pull scores from any tool that gives you numbers, store them in a spreadsheet, and do whatever analysis you want on top. If your keyword scoring tool changes, your spreadsheet structure stays the same.

For apps with small keyword sets (20-30 keywords, single storefront), the overhead of a dedicated tool versus a spreadsheet is small. The workflow is comparable in time.

Where it falls short

The spreadsheet approach breaks down at volume. Running 100 keyword candidates through a manual research process — checking each one, recording the scores, refreshing when stale — takes hours per research pass. For a monthly update cycle with 100+ candidates, the time cost compounds quickly.

Data freshness is the second limitation. Keyword difficulty changes as competitors update their metadata, and popularity shifts with search behaviour. Scores recorded in a spreadsheet age immediately. A score from last month may not reflect the current ranking landscape for a dynamic category.

The third limitation is multi-storefront research. Checking the same 100 keywords across 5 storefronts in a spreadsheet means 500 manual lookups. The time cost makes thorough multi-storefront research impractical with a manual workflow.

Where ASOGrade fits

ASOGrade makes the scoring pass fast: paste up to 100 keywords, get popularity and difficulty back in seconds, with daily-refreshed data. The research workflow that takes 2-3 hours in a spreadsheet takes 20-30 minutes in ASOGrade.

The multi-storefront capability is the second main difference. Checking the same keyword set in the UK, Germany, and Brazil alongside the US is a matter of switching the storefront selector, not running hundreds of additional manual lookups.

For teams that have a well-established spreadsheet workflow, ASOGrade can slot in as the data source — export the scored results and continue the analysis in the spreadsheet if that's where your process lives.

Frequently asked questions

Does moving to a dedicated tool mean I lose the documentation value of the spreadsheet?
No — you can maintain the spreadsheet as the record of decisions, sourcing the numbers from ASOGrade instead of manual lookups. The spreadsheet documents what you chose and why; the tool supplies the current data quickly.
How much time does switching from spreadsheet to dedicated tool actually save?
For a complete research pass across 100 candidates in a single storefront: typically 2-3 hours of manual lookup reduced to 20-30 minutes. For multi-storefront research (4+ markets), the saving is proportionally larger — manual is impractical, ASOGrade makes it routine.

Other comparisons

Try the research pass on its own

Paste 100 keyword ideas and read popularity, difficulty, and competing app count across 109 storefronts — in seconds.

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