Does ASOGrade connect to my Apple Search Ads account?

No. You bring the keyword list — from your campaigns, from Discovery campaign results, or from anywhere else — and ASOGrade scores organic popularity and difficulty for it. Campaign management stays in Apple's own console.

Is ASOGrade's popularity score the same as Apple Search Ads demand data?

Yes — popularity is derived from Apple Search Ads demand signals, the same data advertisers see when deciding what to bid on. Difficulty is a separate calculation, based on the apps currently ranking organically for that term.

How do I decide when to stop bidding on a keyword?

There's no universal threshold, but a common pattern is watching organic difficulty trend down for a term you're paying for, and testing a pause once your app is already ranking in the top 5-10 organically for it — then confirming the organic position holds before cutting the spend entirely.

For

App Store Keyword Research for Apple Search Ads Advertisers

Know which keywords you can rank for free before you keep paying to appear on them

Good fit if

You're running live Apple Search Ads campaigns and want an organic difficulty read on the keywords you're bidding on.
You use Discovery campaigns for keyword discovery and want to evaluate what they surface before committing budget or metadata space to it.
You want a periodic check on which paid keywords have become organically winnable, to trim ad spend where it's no longer needed.

Not a fit if

You need bid management, budget pacing, or campaign automation — that's Apple's own Search Ads console or a dedicated ad-management tool, not ASOGrade.
You need ad performance reporting (CPT, CPA, impression share) — ASOGrade scores organic popularity and difficulty, not your campaign's ad metrics.

Paid and organic answer different questions about the same keyword

Apple Search Ads tells you what a keyword costs to win right now, through your cost-per-tap and impression share. It doesn't tell you how close you are to ranking for that same term organically, for free, given your app's current rating count and metadata.

A keyword with high ad demand and low organic difficulty is a candidate to stop bidding on, once your organic ranking climbs into a position that no longer needs the ad spend to be visible. Without a difficulty number, that decision gets made on ad-spend fatigue instead of on data.

The reverse case matters too: a keyword with real demand and difficulty too high to win organically anytime soon is a legitimate candidate to keep funding with ads indefinitely, rather than a research failure.

Using Discovery campaigns and organic scoring together

Apple's own Discovery campaign type, run on broad match and Search Match, surfaces real search terms your ads matched against — a source of keyword ideas even for a developer who never intends to run ads long-term. Score those discovered terms for organic popularity and difficulty before deciding whether they belong in a Brand, Category, or Competitor campaign, or in your organic metadata instead.

The tap-through rate on a term you're already advertising is itself a relevance signal — a term with a strong ad tap-through and reasonable organic difficulty is a stronger metadata candidate than one your ads perform poorly on, even if both have similar raw search demand.

None of this replaces Apple's own campaign console for bid management, budget pacing, or match-type tuning. It answers one question the console doesn't: given everything currently ranking, could this app win the term without paying for it.

How it works for this workflow

Paste the keywords from your active or planned Apple Search Ads campaigns into ASOGrade for the same storefront.
Read the organic difficulty score alongside what you already know about that keyword's ad cost and performance.
Prioritize organic metadata real estate for terms where difficulty is within reach, and keep the ad budget on terms that remain organically out of range.

Frequently asked questions

Does ASOGrade connect to my Apple Search Ads account?: No. You bring the keyword list — from your campaigns, from Discovery campaign results, or from anywhere else — and ASOGrade scores organic popularity and difficulty for it. Campaign management stays in Apple's own console.
Is ASOGrade's popularity score the same as Apple Search Ads demand data?: Yes — popularity is derived from Apple Search Ads demand signals, the same data advertisers see when deciding what to bid on. Difficulty is a separate calculation, based on the apps currently ranking organically for that term.
How do I decide when to stop bidding on a keyword?: There's no universal threshold, but a common pattern is watching organic difficulty trend down for a term you're paying for, and testing a pause once your app is already ranking in the top 5-10 organically for it — then confirming the organic position holds before cutting the spend entirely.

Other roles

See it with your own keywords

Paste your candidate list and read popularity, difficulty, and competing app count across 109 storefronts.

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