Mining App Store reviews for keyword ideas
Your customers already did a chunk of your keyword research for you, for free, in their own words, in your review section. Most developers never read it that way.
The words customers use to describe your app in a review are often not the words in your own metadata.
Keyword research usually starts from the outside: competitor metadata, autocomplete suggestions, a paid tool's difficulty score. Reviews are the one keyword source that comes from actual users of your actual app, describing it in their own vocabulary, which is often different from the vocabulary you chose when you wrote your listing.
What to look for
Read through your last 100-200 reviews (or however many you have) looking specifically for three patterns: a feature described in different words than your own metadata uses (a user calling your habit tracker a “streak app” is a keyword signal), a comparison to another app (“better than [competitor]” tells you what category the user mentally filed you under), and a use case you didn't explicitly market, someone using your budgeting app specifically for a side business, say.
Turning a phrase into a keyword decision
Not every recurring phrase belongs in your metadata. Before adding one, check it against two things: does it show up more than once or twice across your reviews (a single mention is an anecdote, a repeated one is a pattern), and does it plausibly have search volume (a very specific, personal phrasing might be real but too narrow to be worth a character-field slot). Phrases that clear both bars are strong keyword candidates precisely because they came from real usage, not a brainstorm.
A simple recurring process
Once a quarter, or after a spike in reviews following a release, re-read the newest batch specifically for vocabulary, separate from reading them for support issues or bug reports. The two purposes pull your attention in different directions, and combining them means the keyword angle usually loses.
One caution
Reviews skew toward people who felt strongly enough to write one, usually the very satisfied or the very frustrated. Treat review-mined phrases as a rich source of candidate keywords to validate against actual search data, not as a representative survey of how every user thinks about your app.
Review data is one of the things we checked when comparing all 9 tools in our ASO tool ranking.
Frequently asked questions
Can App Store reviews really help with keyword research?+
Yes. Reviews are one of the few keyword sources written by actual users of your actual app in their own words, which often surfaces vocabulary your own metadata doesn't use.
How many reviews do I need before review mining is worth doing?+
Enough to spot repeated phrases rather than one-off comments, commonly 100-200 reviews, though a smaller, more recent batch after a release spike can also be worth a focused read.
Should every recurring phrase in reviews go into my keywords field?+
No. Check that it recurs more than once or twice and plausibly has real search volume before spending character-field space on it; not every genuine phrase is common enough to be worth targeting.
How often should I re-read reviews for keyword ideas?+
Roughly once a quarter, or after a release causes a spike in review volume, read the newest batch specifically for vocabulary, separate from a support-focused read.