App Store localization planner

How the planner decides

An App Store search in one country does not read one localization. It reads several of your app's localizations at once, and each localization has its own name, subtitle and 100-byte keyword field. So the useful question is per country: which of my localizations does this country's search read?

The planner answers it from two layers, and never blurs them:

• Shown by default Apple's default language for that country. This is the listing people there read, so write it for people.
• Measured one of our probe words, planted only in that localization, ranked in that country on 27 August 2026. The rank is shown.
• Measured: did not rank the probe word did not appear in that country's results.
• Apple's table Apple lists the language for that country; we have not probed it there.

Apple's table describes which languages customers can be shown, not what search reads. Where we measured, it matched search in 103 of 108 cells, so the planner uses it as a first guess and labels it that way. The full study has the method and every cell.

Three rules the plan follows

1. A phrase ranks only when it sits whole inside one localization. In our test, words joined across two localizations returned nothing.
2. Do not repeat a word in two localizations one country reads. The bytes are wasted; the country already sees the word.
3. A word reached through another country's localization ranks lower. Our probe word in the U.K. English field ranked 35th to 146th outside the UK; words in a country's own language ranked near the top.

Every country: Apple's table and our measurements

All 175 countries and regions from Apple's table, checked 29 October 2026. The last column shows our probe results where we measured (27 August 2026, one app, rank among the results Apple returned).

Probe words: slimming lived only in the English (U.K.) keyword field, carb only in English (U.S.), cetosis only in the two Spanish localizations, mincir only in the two French ones. Download every cell as CSV.

Questions

Does the US App Store search my Spanish (Mexico) keywords?

Apple's table lists Spanish (Mexico) as an additional language for the United States, and our probe found a word placed only in the Spanish localizations ranked 8th of 70 in the US storefront on 27 August 2026. So it is likely; check it on your own app before you depend on it.

Is Apple's table a list of what search reads?

No. Apple's page lists the languages customers can be shown in each country and says nothing about search. In our 108 measured cells it matched what search read 103 times, so it is a good first guess, not a rule.

Why does a word from another localization rank lower?

We do not know Apple's reason. We measured it: a word reached through a foreign localization ranked 35th to 146th, while the same kind of word in the country's own language ranked 6th and 15th.

Can I combine words from two localizations into one phrase?

No. In our test, nine pairs joining a word from one localization to a word from another returned nothing, while each word alone ranked. Keep a phrase whole inside one localization.

How do I measure this for my own app?

Plant one unique word in one localization's keyword field in your next version, then search it in each country. VisualASO plans and reads these probes for you and saves your own map.