What the keyword difficulty score measures
Applyra's keyword difficulty score rates how hard a term's top results are to break into, 0 to 100, so you know which keywords you can win before you write.
Video transcript
How hard is it to break into the top results for one keyword? The difficulty score answers from 0 to 100, on one storefront. It reads the results the store returns today: who holds the positions you want. Two things make a keyword hard. Strong incumbents: a big audience on that storefront, good ratings, recent releases. And deliberate targeting: apps that built their listing around that exact term. That's a much harder fight. Under 34 is Easy, 34 to 66 is Medium, 67 and up is Hard. A new app starts with Easy and the soft end of Medium. Difficulty describes the market, not your app. It moves when stronger apps go after a term, or across a whole store when that store recalibrates. So compare keywords within one store. And pair difficulty with traffic: that's the KEI.
The Applyra difficulty score rates how hard it is to break into the top results for one keyword on one storefront, from 0 to 100: below 34 is Easy, 34 to 66 is Medium, and 67 and above is Hard. It reads the results the store is returning today: who is holding the positions you want, and how deliberately they went after the term.
What makes a keyword hard
Two different things, and the score separates them so you know which fight you are picking.
Strong incumbents. A keyword held by apps with a large audience on that storefront, good ratings and recent releases is hard to take, because every one of those signals makes an app harder to displace. Applyra reads the apps a newcomer would genuinely have to get past, not whatever else happens to be on the page. On a term like "shopping list" in the US the leader carries tens of thousands of ratings while the bottom of the page carries one or two, some untouched for years. Counting a dormant app as competition would say the keyword got easier when nothing about winning it changed.
Deliberate targeting. The same keyword can be held by strong apps that rank on it by accident, or by apps that built their entire listing around exactly that term. The second is a much harder fight. It is why two keywords with equally strong incumbents can score very differently, and why a saturated term stays out of reach however good your metadata gets.
What a good difficulty score is
| Score | Band | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 33 | Easy | Low competition. Solid optimization is enough to rank. |
| 34 to 66 | Medium | Achievable with quality content and targeted work. |
| 67 to 100 | Hard | Established apps hold the top. Expect sustained effort, or target a long-tail variation. |
Those are the labels. Which of them you can act on depends on the weight your app pulls today, and you do not have to work that out yourself: Applyra surfaces the terms where a listing your size can realistically take a position, in keyword opportunities.
When the store itself moves
Stores recalibrate without announcing it, and Applyra sees it in the daily ranking data before anybody publishes a word about it. A recalibration shows up as a break in difficulty across a whole store on the same day, often while the other store does not move at all, which is itself the evidence that the change was the store's and not yours.
When Applyra retunes the score to follow the store, the entire history is recomputed with it, so a chart crossing the break compares like with like instead of showing a step. There is nothing for you to do on your side.
If a difficulty score moves and you did not touch anything, start with the algorithm change detector and why your App Store keyword rankings dropped overnight. Difficulty on its own is only half of the decision anyway: pair it with the traffic score through the KEI, which is the number that tells you whether the fight is worth it.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Applyra difficulty score measure?
The Applyra difficulty score measures how hard it is to break into the top results for one keyword on one storefront, from 0 to 100. It reads who is actually holding those positions and how deliberately they went after the term, so a keyword held by strong apps that all target it on purpose scores high.
What is a good keyword difficulty score?
In Applyra, a difficulty below 34 is Easy, 34 to 66 is Medium, and 67 and above is Hard. For a small app, Easy and the softer end of Medium are where a well-written listing can realistically take a position. Hard is where you target a long-tail variation instead.
Can I compare an App Store difficulty score with a Google Play one?
Not as absolute numbers. Each store is scored against its own results and placed on the same 0 to 100 scale, so compare keywords within a store, and compare the shape rather than the level between stores.
Why did a difficulty score change when I changed nothing?
Because difficulty reads the results the store returns today. It moves when stronger apps start going after a term, and across a whole store at once when that store recalibrates its search. When Applyra retunes the score to follow the store, the entire history is recomputed with it, so a difficulty chart compares like with like instead of showing a step.
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