ASO Competitor Analysis

Find keyword gaps and ranking opportunities by looking at who already ranks: not to copy them, but to find what they've validated that you haven't targeted yet.

Preflight: see the aso router skill.

Iron law

This is gap analysis, not copying. The #1 app for a term already owns it: chasing it head-on is expensive. The value is in terms they rank for that you don't, and terms where you can realistically outrank a specific competitor, not the whole field.

Step 1: Identify competitors

If the user already named competitor apps, get their app IDs. If not, find them from your own keyword data or a live search:

aso search "<core keyword>" --limit 20 -c US
aso keywords "<core keyword>" --app <yourAppId> -c US   # topApps in the result are candidate competitors

Pick 2-3 competitors that are: similar in function (not just category), comparable in scale (comparing a 100-review app to a 500k-review one is noise), and actively maintained.

Step 2: Pull their listings

aso app <competitorAppId> --lang en-US

Gives name, subtitle, developer, rating, ratings count, version, genres, description, supported languages. Extract every word from their title and subtitle: these are the keywords they've committed real estate to.

Step 3: Keyword-gap analysis

Build the word list from each competitor's title + subtitle, then score the gap terms against your own app:

aso keywords <competitor_title_words> <competitor_subtitle_words> --app <yourAppId> -c US

This returns popularity, difficulty, opportunity, and (because you passed --app) your current rank for each term. A null rank with the competitor visibly ranking is your gap.

Build the matrix:

| Keyword          | Your rank | Competitor rank (from aso search) | Pop | Diff | Opportunity |
|-------------------|-----------|-------------------------------------|-----|------|-------------|
| security camera   | 45        | 12                                   | 62  | 78   | 13.6        |
| baby cam          | -         | 5                                     | 44  | 18   | 36.1        |

Get the competitor's actual position for a term with aso search "<term>" --limit 20 and locate their app ID in the results.

Step 4: Categorize

Step 5: Present and hand off

COMPETITIVE KEYWORD ANALYSIS: You vs Ring (ID 987654321)

QUICK WINS:
| Keyword    | Their rank | Pop | Diff | Opportunity |
|------------|-----------|-----|------|-------------|
| baby cam   | 5         | 44  | 18   | 36.1        |
| nanny cam  | 34        | 35  | 15   | 29.8        |

For quick wins, hand off to aso-metadata to actually fit them into title/subtitle/keywords and lint the result: don't edit metadata directly from this skill.

Step 6: Ongoing monitoring

Gap analysis is a snapshot; competitors keep moving. Set up a weekly or biweekly check as a standing complement to any one-off analysis, not a replacement for it:

aso app <competitorAppId> --lang en-US   # re-pull title, subtitle, description, rating, ratingCount

Diff against the last pull for: title/subtitle/description text changes (a competitor adding a term is a signal that term is working for them), and rating/ratingCount deltas (a sudden jump in ratings velocity often precedes or follows their own metadata or feature push). Log anything material and revisit the gap matrix if their metadata shifted meaningfully.

Rules

• Never suggest adding a competitor's brand name as a keyword. It risks App Review rejection and gains nothing Apple's algorithm rewards. aso lint flags competitor-brand risk: trust it.
• Don't chase difficulty far above what the app's ratings count can realistically win (see aso-keyword-research's ceiling table) just because a competitor ranks there.
• 2-3 competitors give a cleaner signal than a long list: more just adds noise.
• Re-run the full gap analysis after shipping quick-win keywords (2-4 weeks later, via aso-tracking) to confirm the gap actually closed.