Keyword Space Calculator
Paste your title, subtitle, and keyword field — see how much of your indexed-character budget you actually use, and which characters are wasted.
On the App Store, exactly 160 characters get indexed for search: your title (30), subtitle (30), and the hidden keyword field (100). Every unused character is a keyword you don’t rank for, and every duplicated or wasted character is budget spent twice. This calculator measures your utilization and finds the waste — spaces after commas, terms your title already indexes, duplicates, and filler words Apple ignores.
Your real budget isn’t 160 characters
The US App Store also indexes several additional locales — Spanish (Mexico), and for many categories English (UK) and others. Localizing their metadata adds roughly 200 extra indexed characters that most competitors leave empty. AppDrift’s AI metadata translation fills those locales with keyword-researched terms in one click, and the keyword unlock wizard picks the terms from live store data.
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How App Store keyword indexing actually works
Apple indexes three metadata fields for search: the app name (30 characters), the subtitle (30), and the hidden keyword field (100) — 160 characters total per locale. Words in the name and subtitle carry the most ranking weight, and every word is indexed individually, so Apple combines them into phrases automatically. That’s why repeating a title word in the keyword field is pure waste, and why spaces after commas — which many developers type out of habit — silently burn budget.
What to do with recovered characters
Spend freed-up characters on keywords you can actually win. Check a candidate’s difficulty score first, then verify where you currently stand with the rank checker. Keywords where you rank 11–30 are the highest-leverage targets — you’re already indexed, and a stronger placement can push you onto page one. AppDrift’s keyword tracking watches those ranks daily and tells you which push to make next.
On Google Play there is no keyword field: Google indexes your title (30 characters), short description (80), and the full description’s natural keyword usage. Use the keyword density checker to audit the long description separately.