What is a keyword type?
How is the type decided?
asobeast reads the type from data it already stores, every time the keyword list is read, so it follows your listings and scores without a separate job.- Names. The name of an app is the leading words of its title: the part before the first separator such as
:,|or a spaced dash, or the whole title when it is a single word. A lead of more than three words reads as a description, not a name, and a title of two or more words with no separator gives no name. The developer name, without legal words such asInc,LLCorLabs, is a second name of your own app, and the leading words of your title in the keyword’s own market, such as a localized name, are a third. - Whole names only. A keyword holds a name when it contains every word of it, whatever else it holds. Plurals and accents do not matter, so
forestsholdsforestandcaféholdscafe. A keyword made only of filler words such astheorappis generic. - Your own names first. A keyword that holds your name is an own brand even when a competitor uses the same word.
- Category words are not names. A competitor name whose every word your own listing of that market already uses, or a name two competitors share, even as singular and plural, is a category word and never makes a keyword a brand.
- The search page. When the last scoring run flagged the search as a brand search, because one app with far more ratings than the rest holds the phrase in its name, the keyword is a competitor brand even when no name you track matches, unless it holds a category word from the step above. When the search was not flagged and at least half of the top 10 titles already target the phrase, the keyword is generic whatever the names say, because nobody types a phrase that half the page uses as a name.
Why does a keyword read as a brand or not?
A brand that is also a common word, such as Notion or Things, is where the rules disagree most. The name says brand, while a search page full of apps that use the word says generic. A keyword your own title describes, such asfocus timer for Focus Timer: Pomodoro, reads as an own brand until the search page shows that most results target it. When the type is wrong for your market, set it yourself.
Set the type yourself
Open the row menu of a keyword on the keywords page and choose Keyword type, then Own brand, Competitor brand or Generic. Your choice wins over the detected type until you choose Detected automatically, which goes back to what asobeast reads. The badge of a brand type you set adds “set by you” to the words a screen reader announces and a pointer shows. Through the API,PATCH /apps/{id}/keywords/{keywordId} takes keywordClass with ownBrand, competitorBrand or generic, or null to go back to the detected type. See the API reference.