ASO Audit for App Store & Google Play Listings

What This Does

Analyze App Store and Google Play listings against ASO best practices. Fetches live listing data, scores metadata, visuals, and ratings, then produces a prioritized action plan with rewritten metadata that fits within character limits.

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Quick Start

Step 1: Create a Project Folder

Create a dedicated folder for this workflow (e.g. ~/marketing/aso-audit).

Step 2: Download the Template

Click Download above and save the file as CLAUDE.md in that folder.

Step 3: Run the Workflow

Share an App Store or Google Play URL — Claude will fetch the live listing, score it, and recommend changes.

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Inputs You'll Need

• App Store or Google Play URL for the app being audited
• Target audience and category for the app
• Top competitors (URLs) for keyword gap analysis
• Goals — visibility, conversion, both

How It Works

1. Fetch the live listing data (title, subtitle, short/long description, keyword field, screenshots, ratings, reviews)
2. Score each metadata field against character limits and keyword density best practices
3. Mine the keyword field for duplicates, low-volume terms, and missed opportunities
4. Compare against top 3–5 competitors to find keyword gaps
5. Audit visual assets (icon, screenshots, preview video) for conversion impact
6. Review ratings and reviews for sentiment and recurring complaints
7. Produce a prioritized action plan — quick wins first, then structural changes

What You Get

• Listing scorecard for iOS and Google Play with pass/fail per field
• Character-perfect rewrites for title, subtitle, short description, full description, and keyword field
• Competitor keyword gap analysis
• Screenshot and visual asset recommendations
• A/B testing plan (icon, screenshots, title, short description)
• Localization opportunities for top markets

Tips & Best Practices

• iOS keyword field: use commas, no spaces, no duplicates of title/subtitle words (Apple indexes them automatically)
• Google Play indexes the description — keyword density in the long description matters
• Front-load your title — the first 20 characters appear in search results
• Screenshots aren't indexed but drive conversion — treat them as ad creative
• Update with major releases — algorithm freshness signals matter

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Before You Run It: What the Audit Can and Can't See

The audit works from the public store page, and that sets its limits. Knowing them up front saves you from acting on a guess.

• Your iOS keyword field is invisible to it. That field is hidden from the public listing, so the audit can only infer wasted keywords from your title and subtitle. Paste the actual field from App Store Connect and the keyword recommendations become exact instead of approximate.
• Store pages render partly in JavaScript. A plain fetch often misses screenshot captions, promotional text and in-app events. If Claude Code has browser tools it takes a screenshot of the listing; if not, take one yourself and drop it into the chat.
• No search volume, no rankings. The template says so explicitly and won't invent numbers. If you have Apple Search Ads keyword popularity scores or a paid ASO tool export, paste them in and ask Claude to re-rank the keyword suggestions against them.

Reading Your Score

The 100-point score is weighted, not averaged. Visual assets carry 25%, title/subtitle and ratings 20% each, description 15%, and metadata freshness and conversion signals 10% each. A listing with strong copy but three bare UI screenshots can still land in C territory, which is why the screenshot section is usually where the biggest jump comes from.

The audit also sorts your app into a brand tier before scoring. Most apps are challengers, scored strictly against textbook ASO. Don't copy what Spotify or Uber do with brand-only titles: those choices are scored leniently for dominant apps because users already search for them by name. If you're under ~100K ratings, every character of your title still has to earn a keyword.

A Worked Example

Take a hypothetical habit-tracking app with the iOS title "Streakly" (8 of 30 characters used) and the subtitle "Build better habits daily".

A typical audit flags three quick wins:

Field	Before	After	Why
Title	Streakly (8)	Streakly: Habit Tracker (23)	Puts the category's core keyword in the strongest-weighted field
Subtitle	Build better habits daily (25)	Daily routines & goal streaks (29)	Stops repeating "habit" (Apple indexes each word once) and adds new terms
Keyword field	not visible	planner,reminder,mood,journal,productivity,checklist (53 bytes)	No spaces, no words already in title or subtitle, 47 bytes left for competitor-gap terms

On Google Play the same app gets different advice: there's no keyword field, so those terms have to work naturally into the 80-character short description and the full description, which Google does index.

Getting the Most From It

• Run it on a competitor first. Auditing the category leader before your own app shows you what a high-scoring listing looks like in your niche, and the keyword-gap table is far more useful with real competitor data behind it.
• Treat the action plan as a test queue. Ship the quick wins, then run the bigger changes (icon, first three screenshots) through Apple's Product Page Optimization or Google Play Store Listing Experiments rather than swapping them blind.
• Re-run after each major release so the freshness and ratings sections reflect the current listing.

Related Playbooks

• App Store Optimizer — ongoing keyword research and A/B testing strategy once the audit's fixes are in
• Ad Creative — platform-specific ad copy for App Store and Google Play campaigns
• Analytics Tracking — event tracking so you can measure whether listing changes moved installs