Competitor Teardown
A competitor teardown in ASO is the process of identifying which keywords a competing app ranks for — revealing their strategy and surfacing terms you may have missed.
Every app in the App Store search results is there because it ranks for the keywords users typed to find it. By looking at which keywords an app appears for (and at what rank), you can read their targeting strategy directly from the results — without access to their keyword field, which Apple doesn't publish.
The competitive intelligence from a teardown works in both directions: finding keywords your competitors rank for that you don't yet target (gap opportunities), and finding keywords you both target where you're outranked (improvement priorities).
ASOGrade's competitor teardown works by paste-in: enter any app's App Store URL and read the keyword set it appears for, each scored for popularity and difficulty. You can then take any term directly into your keyword list.
The most valuable teardown targets are apps in your category that rank for terms you want but aren't currently reaching. Their subtitle and keyword choices aren't visible directly, but their ranking footprint reveals them indirectly — the keywords they appear for are the keywords they've successfully earned relevance for.
Frequently asked questions
- Is it possible to see exactly what's in a competitor's keyword field?
- No. Apple doesn't expose keyword field contents to anyone except the app's developer. What you can see is which searches the app appears in — which reveals their effective keyword reach without revealing the exact text they submitted.
- How do I decide which competitor keywords to target?
- Sort the competitor's keyword set by popularity (highest first), then filter out terms with difficulty too high for your current app strength. What's left is your shortlist — terms with real demand that you can realistically rank for, that your competitor is already proving have intent.
Related terms
- App Store Search Ranking FactorsApp Store search ranking factors are the signals Apple's algorithm uses to determine which apps appear at the top of results for a given keyword — primarily metadata relevance, user engagement, and app quality indicators.
- Branded vs. Non-Branded KeywordsBranded keywords include an app or company name; non-branded keywords describe a problem or category without naming a specific product — the distinction matters for measuring organic discovery versus brand recall.
- Keyword DifficultyKeyword difficulty is a 0–100 score estimating how hard it is to break into the top-ranking positions for a given App Store keyword, based on the strength of apps currently holding those positions.
Browse the glossary
Put this into practice
Score App Store keywords by popularity and difficulty across 109 storefronts — the numbers behind competitor teardown.
Start keyword research