Find competitor keywords — and see how much traffic is behind them

The one question behind a hundred searches — what keywords are my competitors using?, how to find competitor keywords, how to see what keywords competitors are using, keywords used by competitors — has a concrete answer. Here is how to get it, and what to do with it.

Free check: what does a competitor rank for?

Enter a competitor's website, App Store link or Google Play link. You get the queries it ranks for, with monthly searches — 25 rows, 3 checks an hour, free.

What "competitor keywords" actually means

A competitor's keywords are the search queries its product shows up for. There are three different lists, and most guides mix them up:

WhereWhat the list isWhy it matters
Google (organic)Queries the competitor's website ranks for, with position and monthly searchesThis is the traffic they get without ads — and the topics you can take
App Store / Google PlayQueries inside store search where the competitor's app ranksStore keywords decide installs; they differ from Google's
Google Ads (paid)Queries the competitor bids on, with cost per clickShows which words convert well enough to pay for

How to find competitor keywords: the method

  1. Find the real competitors first. Not the two brands you know — the ten products a user sees when searching for what you do. Type a dozen phrases your users would type, note who appears, score by frequency and position.
  2. Pull the keyword list per competitor. For a website: the queries it ranks for in Google's top 100. For an app: the queries it ranks for inside the store. Tools that do this cost $99–$139 a month; a one-time report does it once.
  3. Add real demand, not just "volume". Google Ads volume groups similar wordings into one number, so two word orders can both show 1,600 while people click 665 vs 16. Check real clicks (clickstream) before choosing a wording.
  4. Compute the keyword gap. Keywords where two or more competitors rank and you don't. That is the most reliable list of topics to build pages and listings around, because the demand is proven by competitors' traffic.
  5. Check the competition before you commit. A 12,000-search keyword can be a brand name or a query where the top 10 is held by apps with 500,000 ratings. Look at who sits in the top and how strong they are — otherwise you pick the keyword you cannot win.
Real example. For TranslateTube (a YouTube video translator) the competitor keyword lists showed something the founder had not guessed: competitors ranked for 200+ store keywords each while his app ranked for 14 — and the phrases with "YouTube" in them had real demand and a weak top. Putting that keyword into the title and the site grew the product to 22,900 users with no ads. Read the case →

What you get in a Riwords report

Your real competitors, the keywords each one ranks for (store and Google) with monthly searches, real clicks and cost per click, the keyword gap, difficulty for each keyword (who is in Google's top 10, how strong the apps in the store are), a check of your own phrases, plus what competitor users praise and complain about and competitor pricing. Web page, PDF and Excel at a permanent link. One report, $49, no subscription — and the free competitor analysis first, so you see the competitors and their title keywords before paying.

Questions people ask

How do I find out what keywords my competitors are using for free?

Paste your app store link, website or a plain description into the free competitor analysis on riwords.com: you get your ten real competitors and the words they put in their titles. The full ranked keyword lists per competitor, with search volume and real clicks, are in the paid report ($49, one-time).

How to see competitor keywords in Google vs in the App Store?

They are different lists. In Google we take the queries the competitor's website ranks for; in the App Store and Google Play we take the queries the app ranks for inside store search. The report shows both, because store keywords decide installs and Google keywords decide website traffic.

What keywords are my competitors bidding on?

The report shows cost per click for every keyword, which tells you which competitor keywords are worth paying for. The same keyword list serves organic and paid: if a phrase has real clicks and a CPC, someone already pays for it.

Can I check my own keywords, not just competitors'?

Yes. You list the phrases you plan to rank for and the report checks them literally — demand, real clicks, difficulty — and shows what people type instead when a phrase has no demand.

How is this different from SpyFu or Semrush competitor keyword tools?

Those are subscriptions built for SEO specialists and give you data to interpret. Riwords is a one-time report for a founder: it finds the competitors for you, adds real clicks and difficulty, checks your own phrases, digests competitor reviews and pricing, and ends with what to do first.

Free competitor analysis — find my competitors' keywords