---
title: ASO Keyword Checker
url: https://tools.usappteam.com/tools/aso-keyword-checker/
date: 2026-09-04
---

# ASO Keyword Checker

A free tool that checks your App Store and Google Play keyword usage for waste, duplicates and
stuffing risk before you submit. It covers both stores separately, because they index search terms
in completely different places - iOS reads a dedicated 100-character keyword field and never looks
at your description, while Google Play has no keyword field at all and instead indexes your long
description. Everything runs in the browser; nothing you paste is uploaded or stored.

## How to use it

1. Pick the **App Store (iOS)** or **Google Play** tab, matching the store you're optimizing for.
2. On iOS: paste your app title, subtitle and keyword field into the three boxes.
3. Read the flags on each keyword - words already covered by your title or subtitle are wasted
   space in the keyword field, and duplicates within the field itself waste it twice over.
4. Copy the optimized keyword field it generates, which strips both kinds of waste and shows how
   many characters you got back.
5. On Google Play: paste your long description and the exact keyword phrase you're targeting to see
   how many times it appears and whether that density reads as natural or stuffed.

## Why the two tabs check completely different things

This is the single most misunderstood fact in ASO, and it's the reason a checker that treats both
stores the same way gives bad advice.

**Apple's App Store** has a dedicated, hidden keyword field capped at 100 characters. It is indexed
for search, but your visible description is not indexed at all - Apple has confirmed this directly.
That makes the keyword field extremely valuable real estate, and it means every word you already
used in your title or subtitle is money left on the table if you repeat it in the field: Apple
already reads those words from the title and subtitle, so re-listing them there indexes nothing new.
An app titled "FitTrack: Workout Planner" gains nothing from putting "fitness" or "workout" back
into its keyword field - it should use that space on terms the title doesn't already cover.

**Google Play** has no separate keyword field. Search relevance is drawn from the title, the short
description, and - unusually, compared to iOS - the long description itself. That's why the Play
Store side of this tool checks your description text directly instead of a keyword list: it's the
actual field Google's search reads.

## How the iOS keyword check works

The checker splits your keyword field on commas, then for each term checks two things:

- **Is it a duplicate of an earlier term in the same field?** Repeating "workout" twice wastes
  characters for zero benefit - the store already knows you mean it once it's indexed.
- **Is every word in the term already covered by your title or subtitle?** If your title is
  "FitTrack: Workout Planner" and your keyword field includes "workout tracker," the word "workout"
  is redundant (Apple already has it from the title) even though "tracker" isn't. The checker flags
  a term as fully wasted only when *every* word in it is already covered elsewhere - a partial match
  is still doing real work and is left alone.

It also strips spaces after commas in the optimized output, because Apple's 100-character limit
counts every character including spaces - "fitness, health" costs one more character than
"fitness,health" for the same two words, and on a tight field that adds up fast.

## How the Google Play density check works

Paste your target keyword and your long description, and the checker counts exact, whole-word,
case-insensitive matches of that phrase, then divides by total description word count to get a
density percentage. There's no officially published "correct" density from Google - this tool uses
rough, commonly cited ASO guidelines as a caution line, not a hard rule:

- **0 occurrences:** the keyword isn't there at all - if it matters, work it in naturally at least
  once or twice.
- **Under 1% density:** light presence, room to reinforce it a little more.
- **1-4% density:** reads as natural use in most descriptions this length.
- **Above 4%:** repeated more than natural writing would, which risks reading as spam to both users
  and Google's own spam filters - even setting aside any ranking effect, it can hurt conversion when
  real people read it.

The tool also flags whether your keyword appears in the title and short description, since those
carry more search weight than the long description does.

## What this tool does not do

It does not pull live search volume, competitor rankings, or Apple/Google's actual current search
algorithm weighting - none of that is available client-side, and any tool claiming to simulate it
exactly is guessing. What it does is catch the concrete, checkable mistakes: wasted characters,
duplicate terms, and description keyword density that's clearly out of a natural range. Store
character limits also change over time - Google reduced its app title limit from 50 to 30 characters
in recent years - so always cross-check against Apple's App Store Connect and Google Play Console's
own validation before you submit, since those enforce the real, current rules.

## Questions

**Why does the iOS checker flag words already in my title or subtitle?** Because Apple's search
index already reads those fields - repeating the same words in the 100-character keyword field
wastes space that could index a term you're not already covering.

**Why does the Google Play side check my description instead of a keyword field?** Because Google
Play doesn't have one. Its long description is one of the only places on that store where you can
signal relevance for a search term, so that's what the checker reads.

**What counts as keyword stuffing on Google Play?** There's no official published threshold. This
tool flags density above roughly 4% as worth a second look - treat it as a caution line based on
common ASO practice, not a guarantee about ranking or policy.

**Do these character limits ever change?** Yes. Apple and Google both adjust store policy over
time. The limits here reflect current guidelines as of this tool's publish date - always verify
against App Store Connect and Google Play Console before you submit.

**Does removing spaces after commas actually matter?** Yes, for iOS - the keyword field has a hard
100-character cap and every space counts against it, so trimming them can fit one more real keyword.

**Is anything sent to a server?** No. Every check runs as JavaScript in your browser. Nothing you
paste is uploaded or stored - refresh the page and it's gone.

## About US APP Team

US APP Team builds custom iOS and Android apps for a fixed price - $3,500, $7,500 or $12,000
depending on complexity, all from one codebase to both stores. App strategy, including store
positioning, is scoped as part of every build. Start a brief at https://usappteam.com/app-brief