How to track a competitor's App Store updates
To track a competitor's App Store or Google Play updates, revisit their product page on a fixed schedule and record what changed.
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The app name, subtitle or short description, screenshots, price, category, and the What's New text for the current version are all part of the same page any shopper can open, so any of them can move without warning anyone who is not looking. What is not on that page is the App Store's keywords field, a 100-character field that never appears on a product page at all, and neither store publishes a competitor's exact rank for a given search term, so both have to be found by checking search results directly rather than read off the listing. Forvibe's ASO Studio adds a competitor to a project once. On a paid project that has a connected app and at least one keyword tracked against it, every competitor added there gets its listing checked daily from then on: every title, subtitle, version, price, and category change is logged, description, release notes, icon, and screenshot changes are flagged, and a 90-day rating and category-rank trend builds up automatically. A project's own rank sits next to a competitor's on any of those tracked keywords that share the competitor's store and country. A competitor added to a free project, or to a paid project with no connected app or no keyword tracked against it, is not checked at all. Checking by hand runs the same comparison; only the schedule changes, from whenever someone remembers to every day.
The symptoms of tracking a competitor's listing by memory
A competitor's price, screenshots, or description changed weeks ago, and it only gets noticed by accident, on a visit to their page for an unrelated reason.
Checking a competitor by hand means reopening the same product page again and trying to recall what it looked like last time, since neither store keeps a visible changelog for a listing.
A competitor's rank on a shared keyword gets treated as unknowable, when searching that keyword directly would show exactly where they currently sit.
What is public on a competitor's listing, and what is not
A competitor's product page is entirely public: name, screenshots, description, pricing, and category all show there. Their keywords field never appears on it, and no store publishes a competitor's search rank.
- Product page is public
- Apple lists the app name, icon, subtitle, screenshots, description, promotional text, What's New text, and category as visible elements.
- Keywords field stays hidden
- Apple's walkthrough of the product page treats the keywords field as a search-ranking budget, not as something a shopper sees on the listing.
- No Google Play hidden field
- Google Play's listing has no separate hidden field at all; the visible app name and description text are what gets indexed.
- Rank isn't published
- Neither store publishes a competitor's rank for a search term; the only way to know it is to search directly.
Read the full explanation
A competitor's product page is public by construction. Apple lists the app name, icon, subtitle, app previews, screenshots, description, promotional text, any in-app purchases, the What's New text for the current version, ratings and reviews, and the primary and secondary category as the elements that make up that page, the same page any shopper can open. None of it requires special access. The keywords field sits apart from that list. Apple's own walkthrough of the product page covers it too, but only as a 100-character budget spent on search ranking: what wastes those characters, what gets an app rejected for misusing them. Every line of that section is about ranking, not about anything a shopper reads. The field itself is not printed anywhere on a live App Store listing, so a competitor's keyword field stays invisible no matter how closely that listing gets read. Google Play draws the same line differently rather than not at all: its store listing has no separate hidden field to begin with, since the app name, short description, full description, and preview assets that make up the listing are the same text Google's own guidance says helps a shopper discover the app. That guidance warns against stuffing those visible fields with repetitive keywords instead of describing a hidden one to fill. On both stores, a competitor's rank for a specific search term sits outside either list: it is not part of the listing and not published anywhere by the store, so the only way to know it is to search the term and see where they land.
The sequence for catching what changes on a competitor's listing
Record the current listing as a baseline
Open the competitor's product page for the store and country that matters and write down the app name, subtitle or short description, price, category, and current version, since everything else gets compared against this starting point.
Revisit it on a fixed schedule
Reopen the same page on a schedule, not only when it happens to come to mind. Nothing about a hand-checked listing alerts anyone to a change.
Diff what is there against your last notes
Compare the current text and screenshots field by field against what was recorded last time, since a store product page carries no visible changelog of its own.
Search your shared keywords and record where they land
For every keyword both apps compete on, search it and note the competitor's position, since neither store publishes a competitor's rank for a given term anywhere on their listing.
Track rating and category position over multiple checks
A single visit only shows a snapshot. Recheck the same rating and category rank on the same schedule to see whether either one is actually moving.
Or let Forvibe check daily on a paid, connected project
Search for the competitor's app once and add it to a project. On a paid project with a connected app and at least one tracked keyword, the listing is checked daily: title, subtitle, version, price, and category changes are logged, description, release notes, icon, and screenshot changes are flagged, and a 90-day rating and category-rank trend builds up automatically.
How the two approaches compare
Listing changes
Reopen the product page and compare it to memory or old notes
Checked daily once the project is paid and has a keyword tracked against a connected app, with title, subtitle, version, price, and category changes logged automatically
Description, release notes, icon, and screenshots
Only noticed if the description gets reread or the screenshots get scrolled through again
Flagged the day they change, with screenshot changes summarized as additions, removals, or reordering
Keyword rank
Search each shared keyword and write down where the competitor lands
A project's rank and the competitor's shown side by side on any tracked keyword that shares the competitor's store and country
Rating and category position
A single number, accurate only for the moment it was checked
A 90-day trend for both rating and category rank
Questions, answered
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Last updated: September 8, 2026