Apple Ads Popularity Comes to RespectASO - and You Choose the Source

RespectASO now offers Apple's own keyword popularity - the same granular 5-100 values Apple's keyword planner reports - alongside its open-methodology estimate. Both are shown side by side everywhere, and you pick which source powers your scores. Here is how it works, the honest trade-offs of each source, and why we built it as a labeled choice instead of a silent passthrough.

RespectASO now offers Apple Ads popularity as a keyword popularity source - the same granular 5–100 values that Apple's own keyword planner reports, and that ASO tools built on Apple's data pass through. Connect your Apple Ads account, and every keyword you track gets Apple's own popularity number next to RespectASO's built-in estimate. Then you make the call: choose which of the two sources powers your opportunity scores, keyword classifications, and download estimates. This post explains exactly how it works, why we built it as a choice instead of a silent switch, and - in the spirit of our earlier deep-dive on Apple's popularity metric - the honest trade-offs of each source.

What's new: Apple Ads popularity as a source you can choose

Until now, RespectASO derived keyword popularity exclusively from its own open, six-signal model built on observable App Store data. Some of you told us - reasonably - that you also want to see the figures Apple itself reports, if only because every other tool in your workflow shows them. We listened, and we built it the way we believe a premium tool should:

  • Both values, side by side, everywhere. Wherever popularity appears - the Dashboard, the Country Opportunity Finder, trend charts, AI tab results, CSV exports, even the MCP server output, where your AI assistant can also check or switch the source for you - you see the active source's value with a small badge (ASA for Apple Ads, EST for the RespectASO estimate) and the other source's value right beneath it. Nothing is hidden; nothing needs a hover.
  • One source powers the math. You select your source once, in Settings → Popularity Source. Opportunity, classification, and download estimates are always computed from that single selected source - you will never see two conflicting opportunity values.
  • Switching is one click and fully reversible. Change your mind at any time; every score in the app recalculates instantly, including your stored keyword history.
  • Automatic, visible fallback. Apple reports no value for very-low-volume keywords. When Apple is your source and a keyword falls below Apple's threshold, RespectASO automatically uses its estimate for that keyword and marks it with an amber EST* badge. Your scores never silently go missing.

How the Apple Ads integration works

Setup takes about five minutes and is genuinely free: you need an Apple Ads account (free to create at ads.apple.com), but no campaigns, no spend, and no payment method. Inside RespectASO you click "Sign in with your Apple Ads account", complete Apple's own sign-in flow - including two-factor authentication - in a secure embedded window, and set a Primary App ID (any app your account can access, usually your own). RespectASO never sees your password; the session lives only on your Mac, in your local data folder, with owner-only file permissions. That is the same local-first principle the whole product is built on.

From there, everything is automatic. RespectASO fetches Apple's popularity for all your tracked keywords once a day, in batches, politely paced. Keywords you add get their Apple value the moment they are scored, so opportunity is computed from the real number from the start. If Apple rate-limits requests, RespectASO slows itself down, finishes what it can, and resumes the rest on the next cycle - you never have to think about it. And because your keyword popularity requests are made with your own account, on your own machine, your keyword list is never routed through anyone's server, including ours.

One detail worth stating plainly, because accuracy matters to us: Apple's granular popularity values are not part of Apple's official advertising APIs. They come from the same interface Apple's own keyword-planning dashboard uses - which is also how ASO tools that display Apple's numbers obtain them (tools with independent models, like several in the industry, show their own figures instead). We display the values raw, with no remapping or massaging, so what you see in RespectASO matches what you would see in the Apple Ads planner itself.

Apple Ads popularity vs. the RespectASO estimate: the honest trade-offs

We deliberately do not mark either source as "recommended" - because neither is universally better. They are different instruments, and which one you should use depends on what you value. Here is the comparison we show inside the product, unabridged:

Apple Ads popularity

  • It is Apple's own measurement. No third-party model can claim that. If you want the number closest to Apple's view of search demand, this is it.
  • It is comparable across tools that use Apple's data. If your team also uses a tool that passes Apple's values through, choosing this source makes the numbers line up by construction.
  • But it is a closed metric. Apple publishes no methodology, no changelog, and no stability guarantees. In September–October 2025 the metric collapsed 77% in four days across every tool that reads it - an event we documented in detail, with confirmations from MobileAction, Appfigures, Phiture, Astro, Radaso, and APPlyzer. Similar silent shifts happened in June 2024 and March 2026. It can happen again.
  • And it has limited resolution at the low end. 5 is the lowest value on Apple's scale, and a large share of keywords come back at exactly 5 - Apple's data does not differentiate between them, even though they may differ substantially in real search interest. Below a volume threshold, Apple reports nothing at all; long-tail keywords - often the most interesting ones for indie developers - frequently have no Apple value. RespectASO flags both cases visibly and tells you when the other source would paint a different picture.

The RespectASO estimate

  • It is fully inspectable. Six observable signals - result count, leader strength, title match density, market depth, a specificity penalty, and an exact-phrase bonus - documented on our methodology page and open to read in the public source code.
  • It covers everything. Every keyword, in all 30 supported storefronts, with no account, sign-in, or threshold. Long-tail terms get a value like everything else.
  • It is stable. It reads public App Store data, so it does not move when Apple's ad backend silently changes.
  • But it is an estimate. It infers demand from the competitive landscape rather than measuring searches. We have always been explicit about that, and we remain so.

Our practical guidance, for what it is worth: choose Apple Ads if Apple-measured data matters most to your workflow; choose the RespectASO estimate if coverage, stability, and transparency matter more. Either way you keep seeing both numbers - which, incidentally, is a quietly powerful research signal in itself. When the two sources disagree sharply on a keyword, that divergence usually tells you something worth investigating.

Does this contradict what we wrote about Apple's popularity metric?

No - it completes it. Our April 2026 analysis argued two things: that Apple's popularity metric is structurally unreliable as the sole invisible foundation of an ASO tool, and that users deserve to know where their numbers come from. Both arguments stand unchanged. What we objected to was never Apple's data itself - it was tools passing it through silently, as if it were ground truth, with no fallback and no disclosure when it breaks.

The integration we shipped is the opposite of that. The source is labeled on every single value. The fallback is automatic and visible. The choice is yours, informed by the same pros and cons we publish here. And if Apple's metric shifts again the way it did in 2025, RespectASO users will see it happen in their trend charts - both series are plotted - while their scores keep working on the estimate. That is what treating users as adults looks like, and we think it is the standard ASO tooling should be held to.

Getting started

The feature is free for all RespectASO users - like all of our manual keyword research features. Open Settings → Popularity Source in the app, follow the built-in step-by-step guide to connect your Apple Ads account, run the connection test, and pick your source. If you skip the setup entirely, nothing changes: the RespectASO estimate keeps working exactly as before, for every keyword, out of the box.

You can get RespectASO here, read the full scoring methodology on the methodology page, and inspect the estimate's implementation in the open-source repository. If you have opinions on which source serves you better - or you spot a keyword where the two disagree in an interesting way - we would genuinely like to hear about it.

Sources

Apple documentation

  • Apple Ads - Reporting options and definitions (search popularity, 1–5 scale): ads.apple.com
  • Apple Developer - App Store search (organic ranking factors): developer.apple.com

The October 2025 collapse

Open-source code