Add and manage keywords
How to choose keywords
Apple Search Ads knows a lot about your app and its genre, and it can provide a list of keyword recommendations to save you time. You can also add keywords of your own, and Apple Search Ads will suggest a further set of keywords related to the ones you’ve provided. To add any of them to your ad group, simply click the plus sign next to them. You can also bulk upload keywords in the Keywords tab by choosing Upload Keywords from the Actions menu.
Note that for languages that include non-ASCII characters, you must save your CSV file with UTF-8 encoding to prevent character corruption.
Download Keywords CSV Template
Download Negative Keywords CSV Template
Each ad group can contain up to 5,000 keywords. You can bulk upload up to 5,000 rows in the spreadsheet at a time. For negative keywords, the maximum for each ad group is 5,000, with a bulk spreadsheet upload of up to 5,000 rows at a time.
Once you’ve downloaded and opened the spreadsheet, fill in each column with the following information:
Action: If you’re adding a new keyword, enter “CREATE” here, or enter “UPDATE” if you’re updating an existing keyword.
Keyword ID: If you’re adding a new keyword, keep this blank. If you’re updating a keyword, include the Keyword ID, which can be found in the Ad Group Keywords dashboard, in the Keyword ID column. Use the “Edit columns” link to move this into the “Columns to show” side if it’s not visible.
Keyword: Enter the keyword you want to add or edit.
Match Type: Specify either BROAD or EXACT match.
Status: Indicate whether you want the keyword to be ACTIVE or PAUSED.
Bid: Enter your maximum cost per tap (max CPT) bid amount.
Campaign ID: This can be found from the top right of the Campaigns dashboard, above the Edit Campaign Settings link.
Ad Group ID: This can be found in the top right of the Ad Groups dashboard, above the Edit Ad Group Settings link.
If you want to choose your own keywords, here are few tips to help:
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Think like your customers.
Consider the search terms someone may use to find your type of app. What words explain the need your app meets or service it provides?
For example, your app is a new camera app with some unique filters that aren’t available anywhere else. You’ll want to start with the basics, such as your app’s name. Then, think about what your app can do. Terms like colour editor, picture editor and photo editor might also be successful at driving downloads. -
Try both general and specific keywords.
General keywords should still be relevant to what your app offers. Otherwise, your ad is unlikely to make it into the auction for those searches. Using general keywords will help you reach a wider audience, but might also cause you to go through your budget faster, because they can be more competitive and require higher bid amounts.
When you choose specific keywords, your ad may show for search queries that are more narrowly related to your app. Specific search terms can help you improve the rate of ad taps to conversions, but if keywords are too specific you may not reach as many customers as you’d like. -
Consider putting discovery, generic, competitor and brand keywords in separate ad groups.
- Discovery keywords can help you reach a wider audience and mine for popular search terms. Make sure that you use Search Match.
- Generic keywords can also help you reach a wider audience of customers interested in your app or its genre.
- Competitor keywords help your ad show for queries that are more narrowly focused on your type of app.
- Brand keywords help your ad appear for searches directly related to your app and brand. Use the exact match type for these keywords.
Note that when you add new keywords to campaigns, they’ll default to the broad match type and your default max CPT bid. They’ll also apply to all the same countries and regions associated with your campaign.