I'm Furkan. I build iOS apps on my own (MemurOl and KPSS Soru Çöz are two of them) and I'm Apple Search Ads certified, so I've spent more time than I'd like staring at popularity scores. Lately most of the searches I care about show the same number: 5.
That isn't a bug in your tool. Since late 2025, Apple Ads reports most long-tail terms as 5, so every ASO tool now has to estimate them (FAQ). For an indie app this hurts, because long-tail searches are exactly where we can win.
What a 5 does and doesn't tell you
A 5 means "small, or Apple isn't saying". It doesn't mean nobody searches it, and two 5s are not equal. Sorting by popularity turns your list into one big tie, so I stopped sorting by it. Instead I look at three things I can actually check.
1. Does the App Store suggest it?
Type the start of the search into the App Store. If it autocompletes, people type it. TrackASO's popularity is estimated from these search suggestions and always labelled as an estimate (features). An estimate you can see the source of is more useful than a flat 5.
2. Who is in the top 10, and how many ratings do they have?
This is the part that changed my mind. Here is real data from the Turkish App Store (public App Store search results, checked 13 October 2026), for two searches a budgeting app would want:
| Search (TR) | Median ratings of the top 10 apps | Biggest app in the top 10 |
|---|---|---|
| bütçe ("budget") | ~580 | 25,492 ratings |
| bütçe takibi ("budget tracking") | ~15 | 25,492 ratings (the same app) |
The same big app sits in both lists. But under it, "bütçe takibi" is full of small apps: several in its top 10 have fewer than 20 ratings. The median is about 40 times lower than for "bütçe". A single difficulty score can blur a gap like this, so look at who is actually in the top 10, not just at the number.
For a new budgeting app, my pick is obvious: go after bütçe takibi first (and similar forms like "harcama takibi"), and leave the root word "bütçe" for later.
Turkish also taught me to treat each word form as its own search: "bütçe" and "bütçe takibi" are different searches with different competition, so check each one separately.
3. Put it in metadata, then watch the rank
A rank you hold beats a popularity number you can't verify. My routine:
- Put the target in the subtitle or the 100-unit keyword field (the free keyword field helper removes words already in your name and subtitle).
- Ship it with the next update, and change only a few words at a time.
- Watch the rank for two weeks before judging.
When everything is 5
Sometimes every candidate is 5. Take a water-reminder app in Turkey: "su takibi", "su içme hatırlatıcı", "su hatırlatıcı", "günlük su". In that case I stop pretending there's a popularity ranking at all. I rank the candidates by the two signals above (does it autocomplete, how strong is the top 10) and say so plainly: "popularity data isn't telling us anything here".
What I don't do anymore
- Drop a keyword just because it shows 5.
- Fill the keyword field with English head terms on a Turkish storefront because they're the only ones with a number above 5.
- Trust any single tool's estimate, including ours, as a fact.
If you want to try this
You can do all of it by hand with the App Store app and a notebook. If you'd rather not, TrackASO tracks your positions in 175 countries in the real App Store order down to #250, with your Mac off: every tracked keyword is checked every night (FAQ). Plans start from $9.99/month or $79.99/year (pricing).
Related: Get a second 100-unit keyword field in the US App Store · Most searched keywords in Türkiye · Keyword mixer