The Review Analysis Module Finds More Hidden App Store Keywords

In a previous post, we revealed how anyone can use iTunes to do a simple search for new keywords in app reviews. These are keywords that you may not have thought of before and since they come from users, there is a good chance that people might use these words in App Store searches.

If you actually tried the exercise in the previous post, you know that it can still take a very long time to get through just the 5-star reviews. If you haven't tried the exercise in that post yet, we may be able to save you the trouble. We are going to show you a much quicker way.

This video will show you how to use the module. If you prefer the text version, it is provided below the video.

The Review Analysis Module

Review Analysis give you the ability to quickly mine reviews for useful keywords, ways to improve your app and ideas for new features. It is very simple and easy to use. Let's go through it so you can see the valuable information that it can provide. Then we will show you how to determine if the keywords you find with this module are keywords that you should add to your keyword list or not.

First, be sure that the app that you want to analyze is selected at the top. If it is not selected, you can click on the down arrow and select it from the menu. If the app you want to investigate is not on your list, then click on the green Add New App button.

To access the Review Analysis module, select it from the slide-out menu on the left side of the screen.

Review Breakdown Per Day

Now let's break down each component of the Review Analysis screen and show you what you can learn. Under the app title bar, there is a Review Breakdown Per Day graph. This will help you see the review trend by day.

If you put your cursor over the graph, you will see the date and exact number of positive and negative reviews on each day. The vertical multi-colored lines also show you when the app was updated. When you put your mouse over those days, you will see exactly what was updated.

Select ratings with a specific number of stars, or you can see all reviews by using the section menu in the upper right corner of the graph. You can also select the exact date range that you want to see.

Keyword Mention Data

Now let's look at the data that is displayed below the Review Breakdown Per Day. This is what makes the Review Analysis Module so powerful. Here are some of the top results for Clash of Clans.

Here is what the columns mean:

• Term: The keyword or keyword phrase that appears in the reviews of this app.

• Rating: The average rating of the reviews that mention this term.

• Mentions: The number of reviews of this app that mention this term.

When you sort by rating, you will see the keywords that appear in the highest rated reviews. This can give you ideas for keywords that people are searching for. Even if they don't help you immediately, add them to your brainstorming process to help you think of new keywords.

Sorting by Mentions can also be useful for showing you popular keywords that your users use often. Again, you might not find keywords that you can use directly, but they can give you ideas for new keywords.

Context Review

When you click on any of the Terms on the list, you will be able to see a sample of 50 reviews containing that keyword, on the right hand side of the screen. This will give you a good idea of the context in which the keyword is being used.

The keyword will also be highlighted in yellow to make it easy to see. For example, when we click on "elixir", here are the first 5 reviews that we see. The Review Breakdown by Day graph at the top will also show you the review data for the selected keyword.

Review Your Keyword Ideas

At this point, you probably have some keyword ideas that you want to check out. Great!

If you enter your keyword ideas into the Search Reviews field, the Review Analysis module will automatically pull up a breakdown of all of the reviews that contain this keyword, as well as a sample of reviews, with the keyword highlighted.

For example, let's check out the keyword phrase "time waster". This is a term that seems to come up in quite a few reviews. As a side note, also notice that you can also reset the search, export the reviews to a CSV file and track the keyword in a custom list in this module.

"Time waster" might otherwise be thought of as a negative term, but as we can see from the ratings, players consider wasting time a good thing because it primarily appears in 4 and 5-star reviews. This is a good example of how you can get a feel for the sentiment of a keyword with the Review Analysis module.

However, "time waster" is a term that is not highly relevant to this game. So according to our keyword selection criteria, we do not want use this keyword. But it serves as a good example of how you can quickly check your brainstorming ideas.

Since that was not a good keyword, let's take a look at a keyword that has a lot of mentions. The keyword "elixir" currently has 1,698 mentions, so let's examine that keyword. The Rating column shows that there is an average 4-star rating for reviews with this keyword, so there is generally a positive connotation associated with this term.

Is it relevant? Possibly, but it may be a term that people only know about after they have played the game, and not something that they would search for initially. But it could be a term that they search for. Since our job here is to discover new keywords, we definitely want to check this one out.

To do this, we jump over to our Keyword Research module to get the Difficulty and Traffic Scores.

Since you should look at Difficulty before Traffic, this keyword is really good because it does not have much competition, having low Difficulty Scores of 1.5 and 1.7. So it should be pretty easy to rank for. On top of that, it has a good Traffic score of 4.9.

This looks great, and any other app would probably want to test this keyword, if they feel that it is highly relevant to their app. But we are talking about Clash of Clans and they can rank well for keywords that are much more competitive than the average app can rank for. So let's see if this is a keyword that Supercell should test in their keyword list.

Will It Help?

When you have uncovered a keyword or a list of keywords that has made it this far in the selection process, then the next step is to see if this keyword might improve your visibility and downloads...or not. To do this, you have to compare your keyword prospect list to the keywords that you are currently using.

Here are the four keywords that Clash of Clans has in its keyword list that have the lowest traffic. They currently rank in the top 10 for all of their keywords, except "center", which also has the lowest Traffic Score.

Since "elixir" has a slightly higher Traffic Score and is much easier to rank for, should it replace "center"? In this case, "center" is a more relevant term that people would search for (as in: game center), so they would probably not have a need to replace it with "elixir". But if you do find keywords that might help your cause, there is only one thing left to do.

Test, Test, Test

Test your new keywords to see if they do improve your downloads. Remember that keyword optimization is a continual process and must be constantly tracked and optimized. You cannot just set your keywords once and forget about it.

Conclusion

As you can see, this is a much, much faster way of finding new keyword ideas in reviews, than using iTunes. It can help you quickly pick out the keywords that you should examine first so you don't have to dig through tens or even hundreds of thousands of reviews to pull out new keywords. Search both your reviews and the reviews of your competitors to get the most keyword ideas possible.

To learn how to use all of our modules, read our User Guide.

Have you tried digging through reviews to find keywords before? What were your results? Let us know in the comments below.