How to turn a competitor gap into a plan

This guide turns a competitor comparison into two or three changes you can ship this week. It needs a tracked app, at least one tracked competitor and about twenty minutes. The free plan tracks one competitor and shows a preview of the head-to-head; the full table, the complete release history and the AI briefing are on Unlimited (see pricing).

Turning a competitor gap into a plan, in short:

1. Pick competitors that actually contest your keywords, not the biggest apps in the category.
2. Open the head-to-head and read the They lead rows.
3. Qualify each gap on traffic, difficulty and your weight class.
4. Track the survivors so you have a before and after.
5. Check what they ship, how they rate and what their screenshots do.
6. Let the AI briefing do the synthesis.
7. Turn the shortlist into one listing change.
8. Watch the gap on the comparison chart.

1. Pick the competitors who actually contest your keywords

The most common mistake here is picking the category leaders. An app with fifty million installs is not your competitor, it is your weather. Your competitors are the apps a user is choosing between when they type your keyword, which means they are the apps sitting around you in the results.

Four ways to find them, in order of effort:

• Suggested competitors. At the top of Competitors Analysis, on your app page and in the add dialog, Applyra lists candidates derived from the search terms your niche uses, each with a one line reason, such as the number of search terms you compete on head to head, and a Similar app badge when the store itself surfaces it. One click to Track.
• The Keywords Tracker. The Ahead and Behind columns show the apps ranked immediately above and below you on your own keywords, and Ranking shows the top five. Those apps are, by definition, contesting your terms.
• Niche Analysis, in the Tools group, which shows the top apps already holding each sub-niche of your topic.
• The Competitor Finder, the free public tool. Search any App Store or Google Play app by name or paste its link, and it returns up to ten apps it really competes with, no account needed.

Then add them from Competitors Analysis with Add competitor. The screen is covered in finding competitors.

What good looks like: three to five competitors per app, all of them plausibly installable instead of yours.

2. Read the head-to-head, and only the gaps

Open a competitor from the Competitors Analysis list. The comparison page takes up to three competitors at once, and its Head-to-head tab compares your positions on the terms both apps are built around, refreshed every day. It splits them into three filters, with a count on each:

On Unlimited, click They lead. On the free plan the preview already shows those rows. The table gives you the keyword, its Traffic and Difficulty, their rank under Them and yours under You, with Not ranking where there is nothing. Rows you do not follow yet carry a Not tracking badge, and your own brand term is marked Your brand, which you should skip: everybody wins their own name. More in head to head.

3. Qualify each gap before you believe it

A gap is not an opportunity until it passes three checks. Open each row in the Keywords Inspector, which spends an inspection rather than a tracking slot and puts the labels and the KEI verdict on the term.

1. Is anyone searching it? Below 25, traffic is labelled Low: limited demand, and a term with little demand rarely earns a field, however easy it is. See traffic score.
2. Can you win it? Easy, 33 or below, is where a well written listing can realistically take a position. Hard, 67 and up, means established apps hold the top spots. See difficulty score.
3. Is it in your weight class? Put the term in a draft in the Metadata Simulator: its Targeting fit detail marks each term Within reach, Ambitious or Out of reach for an app at your stage.

A gap that fails check 2 or 3 is not a gap, it is a reminder that they are bigger than you. Skip it without regret.

What good looks like: a handful of qualified keywords out of the They lead rows.

4. Track the survivors so you have a before and after

Press Track on each qualified row. It puts the keyword in your Keywords Tracker with its first position measured right away, which gives you a before to compare against once you ship. Without that you will be arguing from memory in three weeks.

When you are out of slots, Track turns into Upgrade. On the free plan, inspect before you track, and keep the slots for the terms you will actually put in your listing.

5. Find out what they are actually doing

Gaps tell you where they beat you. The other tabs tell you why, and they are the part people skip.

• Release history. Their current listing, then a newest first timeline of what changed: title, subtitle or short description, description, release notes, icon, screenshots, preview video, version, pricing. Every plan sees which fields moved; Unlimited adds the before and after and the full timeline. You rarely have to go looking: the bell tells you when a tracked competitor ships, and so does the daily Competitor updates email. Details in release alerts.
• Screenshots. Yours, then each competitor's, one carousel each at the same size. This is where most of the honest discomfort lives.
• Ratings. Rating, number of ratings, last update and category, with Best and Most badges. A rating well above yours is a conversion advantage no keyword work closes.
• Tracked keywords. Your position and theirs on the keywords you follow, side by side.

What good looks like: you can name, in one sentence, what they do better than you.

6. Let the AI briefing do the synthesis

On Unlimited, the AI insights tab turns all of the above into a briefing built from your real ranking gaps, scores and competitor moves. It opens on a verdict, rates your standing on Discovery, Listing, Reputation and Momentum as Ahead, Even or Behind, then writes Opportunities to attack, Strengths to defend, What competitors are doing and Your action plan.

Each opportunity names the keyword, the competitor who leads it, the field to put it in and a priority, which is exactly the input step 7 needs. It synthesises measured data rather than paraphrasing their description, so every proposal traces back to a number on the page. Free accounts see a worked example. See AI insights.

7. Convert the shortlist into one listing change

Now the part that matters. In the Keywords Tracker, sort the terms you just tracked by KEI and take the two or three at the top. Put them where they rank: the title first, the subtitle or short description second. A title entry moves a ranking several times more than the second field, as our study of real metadata changes measured.

Draft it with Simulate changes on your app's ASO Health tab and score it before you submit. On Unlimited, Write my listing with AI proposes three scored listings built around the words people search on your storefront. The field by field procedure is in optimizing an App Store listing and optimizing a Google Play listing. Ship one change; Applyra dates it for you on your charts.

Do not try to close every gap at once. A competitor who leads you on most of the table leads you for a reason a string of edits will not fix, and you will lose the ability to read any of them.

8. Watch the gap on the comparison chart

The chart at the top of the comparison page plots both visibility scores over the range you pick, with a hollow dot on every day either listing changed, so your release and theirs sit on the same line as the gap. Back on the Competitors Analysis list, Your visibility, Their visibility and Gap give today's reading, and the Competitor overview card on the dashboard home keeps it in view. The free plan charts 7 days; Unlimited keeps the whole history. If the gap moves and nobody shipped, check the algorithm change detector before you call it a win.

Two weeks after you ship, come back to the Tracked keywords tab and the three filters. Rows that moved from They lead to You lead are the result. If nothing moved, read those terms in rank history: a term in the second field moves less than one in the title, so the title is the next lever.