Mid-tier market

App Store Keyword Research: Pakistan

Pakistan has a large and rapidly growing App Store user base — English keywords work well without localisation.

Market overview

Storefront code
PK
Market tier
Mid-tier market
Primary search language
English
Storefronts this metadata reaches
25 storefronts

What to know about this market

Pakistan has a large and rapidly growing App Store user base — English keywords work well without localisation.

Difficulty is very low despite significant search volume — a high-opportunity market.

How to research keywords in Pakistan

English metadata is indexed here, so this is a research pass rather than a localisation project.

Pakistan rewards a second pass. Volume is real but competition has not caught up with it, so terms that are locked in the major storefronts are often still open here.

  1. Build the candidate list in English. Start from your existing English list, then add the terms competitors use in their Pakistan subtitle. Regional word choice matters more than spelling: the algorithm treats British and American spellings alike, but it will not connect two different words for the same thing.
  2. Score for popularity in this storefront specifically. Popularity is calibrated per storefront, so scores here read lower than the US for the same term without meaning less. Judge candidates against each other in Pakistan, not against your home market, and treat 25 as the floor.
  3. Check difficulty. Filter to difficulty below 50. This market carries meaningful volume with consistently less competition than the major storefronts, which is the whole reason to work it.
  4. Write the metadata for Pakistan. The same English metadata is indexed in 25 storefronts, so a term you add here is working in all of them. Score your list in the largest of those before you commit the 100 characters.

Metadata allocation for the Pakistan storefront

Three indexable fields, 160 characters between them, and the writing system decides how far they stretch.

  • App Name, 30 characters. Your brand plus the single highest-demand term you can defend in Pakistan. This field carries the most ranking weight of the three, so it takes the term you most want and can plausibly reach, not the one with the biggest popularity score.
  • Subtitle, 30 characters. Two or three secondary terms in English. It is indexed and it is also the line a searcher reads before deciding to tap, so it has to survive being read as a sentence.
  • Keyword field, 100 characters. Latin script, so the 100-character keyword field holds roughly 12 to 16 single words. Drop plurals and stop words: the algorithm matches word stems and builds phrases from the terms you supply, so every repeated word is a wasted character. Never repeat a word already used in the name or subtitle; those are indexed already, and the field is the one place where a wasted character is a term you could have had.

Where your English metadata also ranks

Apple indexes metadata by language, not by country. One English keyword field is live in 25 storefronts.

Writing English metadata for Pakistan is not a single-market decision. The same 100 characters are indexed in 24 other storefronts, where the same terms carry different demand and, more usefully, different difficulty. A term that is closed in Pakistan is frequently open in the smaller markets on this list, and it costs nothing extra to rank there.

Frequently asked questions

What language should I use for App Store keywords in Pakistan?
The primary search language in Pakistan is English. English metadata works well without additional localisation.
Is the Pakistan App Store worth targeting?
Pakistan is a worthwhile secondary target. Keyword difficulty tends to be lower than the major markets for the same search intent, making it a good expansion market.
How does Pakistan keyword difficulty compare to the US?
Pakistan's keyword difficulty is substantially below major markets for most categories. This makes it a low-effort way to capture App Store users in an underserved market.
How many storefronts does one English keyword field cover?
25. Apple indexes App Store metadata by language rather than by country, so a single English keyword field is live in Pakistan and 24 other storefronts. Score your candidate list in each of them before committing the 100 characters, because difficulty varies between them even though the metadata does not.

Storefronts to compare with Pakistan

Markets that search in English come first, then neighbours in the same region.

Research Pakistan App Store keywords now

Score keywords in the Pakistan storefront — popularity, difficulty, and competing apps count — across 109 markets in one workspace.

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