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Your ASO learning objective
Review the proposal against its research record and separate completeness checks from evidence of performance.
- Step 1Compare meaning and coverage
- Step 2Resolve approved-candidate gaps
- Step 3Define what approval and measurement mean
Use draft comparison to inspect the argument
Keep the current or approved baseline in A and the proposal in B. Review each field and ask what changed in meaning, not just which words changed. A shorter subtitle may communicate the main job more clearly even if it covers fewer candidate words. Conversely, a technically complete draft can overstate what the product does.
The Workbench checks whether every word in a candidate appears within a field, ignoring order and case. That is a transparent word-coverage rule. It does not simulate store indexing, guarantee a phrase match or account for all linguistic morphology. A candidate marked present still needs a human review of the sentence or keyword-field context.
Resolve the evidence queue before handover
Inspect source, date, intent, locale, target field, decision reason and product evidence for approved candidates. Resolve missing values with real references rather than filler such as “good keyword”. For imported metrics, retain the provider and definition. If a gap cannot be resolved, downgrade the decision or explicitly defer the candidate.
Look across the rejected set too. A reviewer should be able to understand why a prominent suggestion was excluded. For example, “offline navigation” is excluded because the current product records memories; its omission is deliberate, not a forgotten opportunity. Keep this reasoning in the exported handover so the same debate does not restart at production time.
Distinguish approval from outcome measurement
Metadata approval means the proposal meets the project’s evidence and communication criteria. It does not establish an uplift. Record a measurement plan with comparable dates, locale, source mix and relevant console metrics. If screenshots or acquisition campaigns change at the same time, note those confounders before attributing a later movement to the new wording.
Worked example: Trail Notes
This fictional hiking-journal app and its review samples are the teaching project. Treat the example as a reasoning exercise you can adapt to your own evidence.
- Original draftEvery candidate is marked approved because the word-coverage check is green.
- Revised proposalApprove only candidates with documented relevance, source and placement; retain unresolved candidates as pending and record how the released proposal will be observed.
- Why it changesA presence check can catch an omission. It cannot replace a decision about meaning, evidence or performance.
Your ASO assignment
- Review every approved candidate’s field coverage in A and B. Inspect at least one case where words are present but their context is weak.
- Open the unresolved evidence list and resolve or defer each flagged approved candidate. Review rejected candidates for clear exclusion reasons.
- Write a post-release observation plan naming the metric, comparison period, locale, owner and concurrent changes to record.
Your handover and assessment criteria
Your work is ready for review when each deliverable below can be understood without a verbal explanation. Include the source or product reference, the decision owner and any unresolved evidence gap. If a reviewer cannot verify a claim, record the missing evidence before treating the proposal as approved.
- Deliverable 1Baseline and proposed metadata comparison
- Deliverable 2Resolved decisions and explicit remaining gaps
- Deliverable 3Approval criteria and post-release observation plan
Check your understanding
Installs rise after metadata and screenshots change together. Can the team attribute the increase to keywords alone?
Read the interpretation
No. Record the simultaneous changes and inspect traffic mix and other context. The observation may inform further work, but it does not isolate the effect of the keyword changes.
Record your progress
Mark this lesson complete after checking your assignment against the handover criteria. Progress stays in this browser, separately from your tool project.
Sources and further reading
Platform references checked 30 September 2026.
App Store keyword research guide · Check final metadata fields