Has anyone added keywords for one of their existing apps? Before you do, you should be aware that your app description will cease to be used in searches and there may be a delay before your keywords are used. So, expect a day or so of possibly reduced sales/downloads. Also, I can't confirm that all of your search terms will be used. I've never seen any data on how important search terms are, but apparently half of the visibility of a few of our apps was due to searching, with the remainder of visibility being due to being on a top-100 sub-category list.
I'm waiting to submit keywords until this whole thing plays out a bit. I've heard of apps dropping out of the store, the issues you just cited, and not to mention only being able to submit keywords / app title changes once per binary submission, now. The keyword addition came as a complete surprise to me, and I'm wary of touching it until I see some documentation on how it works... official or not. How do you know what keywords are best, and which will be ineffective? I wonder how you submit new keywords with your new binary? I assume there's a field for it during submission, as with the version changelist field, but I worry that it could be implemented in the same way that app descriptions are, where it is vague as to whether you are altering the current or new version's data.
There's a field on the Overview tab in the Edit Application section, just below the SKU field. The help for it says "One or more keywords that describe your app. Keywords are matched to user’s searches in the App Store and help return accurate search results. Separate multiple keywords with commas." So there's no guidance as to what type of words to use or how many.
I just added keywords for one app, I just thought about how I would try and find the app if I forgot the name and used those keywords. Hopefully it works fine edit: I should add that once you've entered your keywords, you will not be able to edit them unless you update your app.
Keyword searching is now working better. For best results, separate your keywords with a comma and no spaces. You won't be able to update your description unless you add keywords. But, if you are happy with your description and your description already contains the keywords you would use, you are better off not adding keywords until you need to update your app or your description.
Ugh - when I entered my keywords, the little help widget (?) popped up help for something entirely different and I failed to separate them with commas. Now I gotta deal with Apple via email to try and fix this (shudder).
what happens if seperated by space - I did the same with my apps but all with spaces . -- I just wrote an email via the contact system -- I assume many people will use space as usually.
I also used the contact system to submit new keywords (well, the same ones with commas in between) but I just did a few searches and my space-delimited-keywords seem to be working - hopefully that won't change!
I'm not sure why they would want to only use commas unless they wanted people to be able to use spaces to join two words together. It seems a rare case that someone would want to limit their searches by ANDing two keywords together. However, the forum post I read said that spaces would work 'for now', so you may want to get that new binary ready.
