Apple search popularity: the 5–100 index, flooring, and autocomplete

Every 'search volume' number in ASO descends from one signal: Apple Search Ads' popularity index. Knowing how it is scaled, floored, and gapped is the difference between reading demand and reading noise.

The 5–100 index

Apple scores keyword demand per storefront on a relative index from 5 to 100 inside its Search Ads tooling — the granular version of the coarse 1–5 popularity the official Apple Ads API reports. It is not a search count and the scale is steeply nonlinear: the gap between 70 and 80 represents far more searches than the gap between 20 and 30, and top generic terms dwarf everything mid-scale. Apple publishes no absolute volumes for it, which makes every third-party "searches per month" figure a model on top of this index, not a measurement.

The flooring problem

Below its internal threshold Apple clamps keywords to the floor value of 5 or reports nothing at all — the index goes silent exactly where keyword research lives, in the long tail. On the order of 90% of real-world keywords sit at the floor, and a mass re-flooring in late 2025 pushed that share up without reverting.
Coverage is Apple Ads coverage: roughly 90 of the ~175 App Store storefronts. In the rest — most of Latin America, Africa, and smaller Asian markets — Apple publishes no demand signal of any kind.
A floored 5 means below threshold, not zero demand. Two keywords both showing 5 can differ by an order of magnitude in real searches.

Autocomplete as the independent signal

App Store search suggestions are ordered by popularity, which makes autocomplete a measurable, per-storefront demand read that works in every market: probe the prefixes of a keyword (h, ha, hab, …) and record where the full term surfaces. Earlier and higher means more demand. openaso's volume tool blends that probe with rating mass of the top results, competitor count, and title saturation into a transparent estimate — and serves a hybrid: Apple's real index as source: "apple" where it exists, the estimate as source: "proxy" where Apple floors or has no coverage, never silently mixing the two.

volume → apple where real, proxy where floored

{
  "keyword": "habit tracker",
  "storefronts": [
    { "country": "US", "popularity": 46, "source": "apple",
      "applePopularity": 46, "floored": false, "estimate": 41 },
    { "country": "AR", "popularity": 23, "source": "proxy",
      "applePopularity": null, "floored": true, "estimate": 23,
      "components": { "autocomplete": 31, "ratings": 18,
        "competition": 24, "titleMatch": 12 } }
  ]
}

The components object is the estimate's whole model, exposed per call — when a proxy number surprises you, the per-signal scores say why, and the suggest tool shows the raw autocomplete lists the probe walked.

Reading popularity honestly

Compare keywords within one storefront; the index is relative per market, not comparable across countries.
Treat 5s as unknown, probably small and rank them with the proxy signals instead of discarding them — floored keywords with strong autocomplete presence are the classic underpriced targets.
Demand is necessary, not sufficient: weigh popularity against competition and your realistic rank ceiling before spending metadata budget — the audit tool scores candidates on exactly that triad.

FAQ

Is search popularity the number of monthly searches?

No. It is a relative index from 5 to 100 per storefront, nonlinearly scaled, with no published mapping to search counts. Any tool quoting absolute monthly searches for App Store keywords is modeling on top of this index or extrapolating from panel data.

Why do most of my keywords show a popularity of 5?

Apple floors every keyword below its demand threshold at 5 — on the order of 90% of the long tail. A 5 means below threshold, not zero; use autocomplete-based estimates to rank keywords inside the floor.

Which storefronts have no Apple popularity at all?

Any storefront outside Apple Ads' roughly 90 markets — much of Latin America, Africa, and smaller Asian storefronts. There, autocomplete probing is the only per-market demand signal available, and volume responses arrive with source "proxy".

Why do different ASO tools disagree on volume for the same keyword?

They share the same Apple index where it exists and diverge in what they layer on top — flooring treatment, panel data, extrapolation models. Disagreement in the long tail is the models disagreeing, because Apple publishes nothing there.

Terms

search popularity — Apple's relative 5–100 keyword demand index per storefront, from Apple Search Ads — the only demand signal Apple publishes.
floored keyword — A keyword clamped to popularity 5 (or omitted) because it falls below Apple's demand threshold — below-threshold, not zero-demand.
autocomplete probing — Measuring demand by walking a keyword's prefixes through App Store search suggestions and recording where the term surfaces.

markdown mirror: /reference/search-popularity.md · full corpus: /llms-full.txt