The latest update from Google regarding several changes in Google Play Store will astonish you. On November 2nd, 2022, Google announced that the Play store would begin to prioritize apps that deliver in-app and technical quality by conducting proper promotions at diverse places across the play store so that customers can quickly identify them. Changes hint at Google’s intent to make an editorial eye on how apps are distributed and featured on the Play Store. Apple focused on it in the prior years by following its own App Store revamp in 2017, evident from the segregation of the games and apps into their tabs and the introduction of the editorial content consisting of articles and tips.
Lauren Mytton, Group Product Manager Google Play, said, “App quality is the foundation of everything we do at Google Play.” Android users want great experiences from the app and games they download from the Google Play store. Some of the apps need help to meet the quality bar, due to which they will be excluded from prominent discovery surfaces like recommendations. In contrast, others may display a warning on their store listing to set proper expectations.
Google Play to Highlight Higher-quality apps
Google said it’s beginning to steer customers away from the lower quality apps by bringing changes for app determination and its visibility on the platform. The new update shows that all apps not meeting the quality standards will be excluded from some areas of the Play store, including the recommendations. Other apps might include a warning on their store listing to set the required customer expectations. Play store will start implementing store listing warnings on November 30th, 2022.
Google Play to enhance Technical Quality
Google said that they are now replacing their existing core vitals metrics, which is a one-stop destination for monitoring the technical quality of Google Play. It consists of stability and performance metrics from the field with the new and more user-focused metrics. The company said that “it is aligning the definition of technical quality with the user experience.” Entire metrics affect the visibility of apps on the Google play store.
New quality thresholds of the app exclude specific crash rates and app not responsive (ANR) rates based on overall and per-phone model basis. It is clear from the name that the user-perceived crash rate shows the percentage of the daily active users who witnessed at least one crash that is expected to have noticeable. Apart from it, user-perceived ANR is the percentage of regular users who saw at least one ANR that is probable to have been apparent.
Various factors affect Google play prioritization of apps.
Beyond technical quality, Play store editors will consider a different range of factors like whether or not the app or game has a polished design, if the content retains users engaged, if ads are well-integrated, if the app is accessible, and if the navigation, controls, and menus are simple to use among other things. The monitoring team of Google Play will check whether the app can meet Android’s quality guidelines or not.
New promotional capabilities
Google rolled out new promotional content formats to developers and a new type of Custom store listing intended to provide support and place apps in front of a maximum number of users. For promoting the apps on the play store, special merchandising units will be leveraged by LiveOps. These promotional offers and discounts, in-app events, pre-registration announcements, major app updates, and many others. It is a fact that such marketing units provide app stores a more real-time feel as they can market on explanations to download and launch apps now, rather than just providing the wide-ranging promotion.
Google has noted that the developers who have used LiveOps have witnessed a 3.6% rise in revenue and a 5.1% rise in 28-day daily active users against comparable titles that don’t take benefit of the offering. On November 2nd, 2022, LiveOps was renamed to ‘Promotional Content’ to replicate longer-term tactics to expand the feature to support new content types that consist of those which will see the promotional units appearing more intensely combined within the Play Store across customer’s homepages, in discovery and search areas, in title listing as well as directly in apps via deep links. Google has brought an update in guidelines for the priority quotas and enabling bulk data downloads. Developers have the opportunity to get changes by leveraging events to grow towards active audiences and also to increase revenue. Visibility, as well as promotion across the play, is dependent on the quality of the title as well as unique content.
Driving reacquisitions
One of the essential parts is bringing back users who have already tried the title. The mobile ecosystems continue to mature, and developers continue to invest for an extended period. This growth channel is gaining essential significance. Google has introduced Churned-User Customer Store Listings. It allows the developers to share the story with users on the Play store who have attempted to uninstall apps or games. Store listing by the developer’s power experiences, like the overlay is seen when interacting with an app ad on YouTube, the users across the diverse Google Surfaces can witness custom reacquisition messages. Over the coming months, it is predicted that Google Play can help by reacquisition excellent, high-quality titles. Churned-user Custom Store Listings will start from the end of the year and can develop interest.
Prediction for Play Integrity API
Google will soon update the Play integrity API to protect risky and fake traffic with more features. The two changes focus on app safety and protecting developers and consumers downloading their apps from coordinated attacks. Soon, developers will be able to customize API responses and can set up tests in the Play console. Data can be gathered, and new reports can be used to analyze API responses. In addition, Google is announcing its new programs to combat coordinated attacks on app ratings and reviews. Google has yet to provide many details about the working of the programs. Still, it would give developers a new way to strike back if their app was unethically targeted with false reviews, either by users or apparently by their competitors. This concern made headlines by leading a new social app, GAS, that suddenly became the target of a hoax claiming that it was used for human trafficking. Human beings, leading users to delete the accounts. Before this, Google announced other updates to support customers for a better experience, one of its recent updates is about fantasy and rummy apps. Google has allowed fantasy and rummy apps on the play store. You can click here to check the full article for further updates.
