Our Methodology

App Store Optimization shouldn't require expensive subscriptions. The core data — search results and app metadata — is publicly available through Apple's iTunes Search API. What's been missing is a good way to interpret that data and turn it into actionable decisions.

RespectASO is a free, open-source, self-hosted tool that does exactly that. It runs locally on your machine, queries Apple's iTunes Search API directly, and gives you the same kind of competitive analysis that paid tools charge for — without sending your data anywhere.

Our goal isn't to replace every feature of paid ASO platforms. It's to cover the 80% of use cases that independent developers and small teams actually need: Is this keyword worth targeting? How hard is it to rank? What downloads can I realistically expect?

A note on complexity: Apple's ranking algorithms are proprietary and undocumented. No tool — regardless of price or sophistication — knows exactly how they work. Past a certain point, adding more complexity to the analysis doesn't improve accuracy; it just creates a false sense of precision. We'd rather give you honest directional guidance than overfit to a black box.

The popularity score (5–100) is estimated from the competitive landscape of each keyword. Apple removed its Search Ads keyword popularity endpoint (v4 deprecated 2025, v5 never included it), so no tool — free or paid — has direct access to Apple's popularity data anymore.

Instead, we analyze the apps that actually rank for a keyword and derive a popularity estimate from six signals:

Keep in mind that popularity is an estimate, not an exact measurement. A score of 60 doesn't mean "60 searches per day" — it means the competitive signals suggest significantly above-average search volume. We use a calibration model to estimate actual daily search counts from popularity scores, but those estimates are rough approximations.

The difficulty score (0–100) tells you how hard it is to rank for a keyword. It's calculated by analyzing the actual apps that currently rank in the top results and asking: how strong is this competition?

We look at seven factors, each weighted by how much it affects your chances:

Your position in search results determines how many people see — and download — your app. The difference between position #1 and #10 is enormous.

We calculate difficulty separately for each tier because the competition is fundamentally different. Breaking into the top 20 might be easy, but cracking the top 5 could require displacing apps with millions of ratings. The tier scores help you set realistic goals.

Our download estimates combine three inputs:

1. Daily searches — derived from the popularity score using a calibration model anchored to real-world download data. The growth rate accelerates above popularity 75 to reflect the logarithmic nature of Apple's popularity scale.
2. Tap-through rate by position — what percentage of searchers tap on each result. Position #1 gets roughly 30% (always fully visible with icon, screenshots, and GET button), dropping to about 1.3% by position #10. Based on App Store search behavior research and cross-referenced with Apple Search Ads engagement data.
3. Conversion rate — what percentage of people who tap through actually install. We show a range: 5% (unknown indie app, weak listing) to 20% (category leader with strong brand and ratings).
4. Market-size scaling — search volumes are calibrated for the US App Store. Estimates for other countries are scaled down based on relative App Store size — for instance, Canada and Australia receive a fraction of US search volume for the same popularity score.

The result is a range (low–high) for each ranking position. These are directional estimates for downloads from this specific keyword only. Your total downloads will be the sum across all keywords you rank for, plus browse traffic, referrals, and other sources.

For each keyword, we combine popularity and difficulty to give you a targeting recommendation. This is meant to quickly answer: should I bother optimizing for this keyword?

ASO is a numbers game. No single keyword will make or break your app. What works is building a portfolio of well-chosen keywords across your app title, subtitle, and keyword field.

Everything runs on your machine. RespectASO queries one public Apple endpoint:

• iTunes Search API — returns apps matching a keyword, along with metadata (ratings, genre, release date, publisher). No authentication required.

Popularity scores are estimated locally from the competitive landscape of each keyword — not fetched from Apple. Apple removed its Search Ads keyword popularity endpoint (v4 deprecated 2025, v5 never included it), so we reverse-engineer popularity from the signals described above.

No data is sent to any third-party server. No account is required. The entire codebase is open source (AGPL-3.0) — you can audit exactly how every score is calculated.