Keyword Mining is finding very few keywords
A discovery run completed and the candidate list is short, or empty. A few root causes explain most of these cases.
Before you start
- Confirm at least one discovery automation is active on the app in question. An empty list on an app with no active automations is working as designed.
- Note the storefront you are looking at. The same app can have rich discovery in one market and a thin list in another.
1. The app description is too narrow
Keyword Mining scores candidates against your app's description and purpose. An app whose App Store description consists of one short sentence and a generic tagline has very few semantic anchors. The system rejects most candidates as ambiguous or off-topic. Review the app's description in App Store Connect. A more specific description, which is good practice anyway, immediately improves discovery breadth.
2. The market is small or niche
Cross-lingual discovery is strong but not unlimited. A storefront with low search volume, a small app category in the local language, or a very specialized use case will produce fewer candidates than a global storefront with rich category vocabulary. See Multilingual discovery for what to expect per language.
3. The scoring model rejected most candidates
The scoring step filters false positives before a candidate reaches your review queue. On apps with specialized commercial intent, a large fraction of category-adjacent terms get cut because their underlying purpose does not match. This is the intended tradeoff: fewer but better candidates. If you want to see rejected candidates to sanity-check the filter, look at the Rejected view in the Keyword Mining UI where available.
4. The automation filters are too restrictive
A discovery automation scoped to only brand or only seasonal keywords will return a narrow list by design. If you expect broad coverage, verify that at least one automation with the generic preset is active. See Discovery automations.
5. The app is new to the system
For a recently added app, the first run has less context to draw on. After a few discovery cycles the list broadens as seed data accumulates. If the app was added in the last 7 days, retry in a week.
6. The keyword already exists on another campaign
Candidates that are already live on another ad group in the same market are deduplicated before they reach your review queue. A list that looks empty may be a list that was already covered.
When to contact support
If the description is solid, rules are not restrictive, and the list is still empty across several markets, share the app ID and the storefront and contact your Catchbase representative.