Your App's ASO Score: What It Means and How to Fix It in 30 Minutes

The title is a documented listing field on both stores, but neither store publishes a fixed numeric weight for it. Apple and Google currently limit the name/title to 30 characters. The audit checks presence, valid length, and whether the text clearly describes the app; it does not award points for filling every character.

What good looks like:A title that describes the app accurately and communicates its core value within the limit. For example, “Calm - Sleep & Meditation” uses the primary keyword “sleep” while remaining brandable and clear. Confirm the current limits in Apple's App information reference and Google's store-listing reference.

On the Apple App Store, the subtitle field gives you 30 additional characters that are indexed for search. On Google Play, the short description (80 characters) serves a similar visible-copy purpose, but it is a distinct field. The audit checks that the applicable field exists, stays within its limit, and gives users a clear value proposition.

What good looks like: A subtitle that describes a key benefit in natural language. Keyword coverage can be a research hypothesis, but Lite ASO does not assume a universal subtitle-to-title weighting formula or reward repetition.

This is especially important for Google Play, where the store-listing text helps people discover and understand the app. Apple documents its description as product-page copy and web-search content, not as part of the private 100-byte keyword field. Lite ASO therefore treats the two platforms separately and does not use a universal keyword density target.

What good looks like: Your primary keyword accurately explains the app, leads with the most useful information, and uses relevant language naturally. Google explicitly advises developers to focus on users and avoid repetitive or unrelated keywords in its metadata policy; it does not publish a preferred density percentage or repetition count.

Screenshots are conversion creative. The audit observes whether screenshots are available and gives messaging hypotheses to test. It does not assume screenshot OCR or caption text is part of native keyword indexing.

What good looks like:A complete, policy-compliant set whose opening frames explain the product clearly. More images are not automatically better. Test ordering, captions, and concepts with the stores' product-page experimentation tools.

When rating data is available, the audit records the observed average and presents it as context. It does not infer a store ranking formula, a trajectory weight, or the causal effect of a rating change.

What good looks like: Interpret the rating against your category, country, sample size, and recent trend. Treat it as an observation to investigate, not a universal threshold or promised conversion lift.

Reviews are valuable customer-language and product-quality evidence. Lite ASO can summarize themes and track available counts, but it does not treat review-body text as a deterministic keyword-index source or apply a secret review-velocity weight.

What good looks like: Read recurring themes, respond helpfully, and use store-compliant in-app review APIs at appropriate moments. There is no universal monthly-review target in the heuristic.

When tracked keyword data exists, this dimension reports the observed positions and coverage for the selected store, country, locale, and time. If the data is missing, the dimension is excluded instead of being scored as failure.

What good looks like: Define a baseline, monitor the same query and market consistently, and investigate changes rather than applying a universal top-10 or top-50 quota. This is where proper keyword research becomes essential: targeting keywords that match your app's actual strengths.