App Store keywords, per locale: why literal translation fails

The keyword field is the one part of an App Store listing your users never see, and the part most often wasted when an app gets localised. Here is how it works and how to fill it properly in each language.

What the keyword field is

In App Store Connect, every localisation of your app has its own keyword field with a limit of 100 characters. Words go in as a comma-separated list. The field is not shown on your product page; it exists only to tell App Store search which terms your app should be found for.

Three things follow from that limit:

• Commas count, spaces after them waste room. Write habit,routine,goals, not habit, routine, goals. Every space you leave out is room for another word.
• Don't repeat what is already indexed. Your app name and subtitle are already used for search. Repeating those words in the keyword field spends characters for no gain.
• Single words are usually more flexible than phrases. Search can combine words from your title, subtitle and keyword field, so listing sleep,tracker often covers more ground than spending the same space on one fixed phrase.

Other common space-wasters: your own brand name (already in the title), the word "app", plurals of words you already include, and category names you already sit in. Apple's guidelines also prohibit using other apps' names or trademarks you don't own, so competitor names are a risk, not a shortcut.

Every locale is a separate field

When you add a localisation in App Store Connect, such as German, Japanese or Brazilian Portuguese, you get a fresh name, subtitle and keyword field for it. That localisation is what people searching in that language and storefront are matched against. If you only have English, a user in Germany searching in German has very little to match your app to.

That means each additional localisation is, in effect, another 30-character title, another 30-character subtitle and another 100-character keyword field working for you. Leaving them empty, or filling them with a copy of the English list, throws that away. It is also worth reading Apple's current documentation on which localisations are used in which storefronts, because some storefronts take more than one language into account.

Why literal translation fails

The tempting shortcut is to take your English keyword list, run it through a translator and paste the result. It goes wrong in predictable ways.

People don't search with translated words. Search terms come from how people actually talk about a problem in their language. An English user types "habit tracker". A Japanese user may well search for 習慣化 ("making something a habit") or 手帳 (a planner notebook), terms a dictionary would never give you for "habit tracker". A translated list matches what a translator thinks, not what users type.

Loanwords and English terms are often what people use. In many markets, users search with the English word or a local loanword ("app", "planner", "tracker", "VPN", "widget"). Translating these into a formal native equivalent can push you onto a term nobody searches.

Lengths change, so the 100 characters fill differently. German compounds are long, so you fit fewer words. Japanese, Chinese and Korean words are short in characters, so you can fit many more terms, and the right list is longer and more varied than the English one. A one-to-one translation leaves space wasted in one language and overflowing in another.

Grammar works differently. Some languages inflect nouns heavily, combine words, or have several spellings in common use (Japanese can be written with kanji, hiragana or katakana). Picking the form people actually type matters more than picking the "correct" one.

The title and subtitle change too. Once the localised title and subtitle are written, the keyword field has to be rebuilt around them so it doesn't repeat their words. That can't happen if the keyword list is just translated in isolation.

A better process, per locale

1. Start from the user's problem, not your English list. Write down what your app does in plain terms, then ask how someone in that market would describe needing it.
2. Check real search suggestions. Change your device or a test account's App Store region and language and type the start of candidate terms; the suggestions show what people commonly search. Look at the titles and subtitles of well-ranked apps in your category in that language.
3. Write the title and subtitle first. Put your strongest terms there, within 30 characters each.
4. Fill the keyword field with what's left. Comma-separated, no spaces, no repeats of title or subtitle words, up to 100 characters.
5. Back-translate. Have every term translated back into English so you can sanity-check that nothing is off-topic, embarrassing or misleading.
6. Revisit after a few weeks. Watch impressions and search traffic per country in App Store Connect analytics and swap out terms that bring nothing.

Quick checklist

• Each locale has its own keyword list, not a copy of English.
• No spaces after commas, no duplicates of title or subtitle words.
• No brand names you don't own.
• CJK locales use the extra room for more terms; long-word locales prioritise.
• Every term back-translated and checked.

Done well, localised keywords are one of the cheapest ways to be found outside the English-speaking stores: the field already exists in every localisation you add, and it only costs the effort of filling it properly.