Google is a company who loves big data so it makes sense that they are collecting information about the applications and games that we download from the Google Play Store. Previously, an important metric that Google used to determine if an application or game was good or not was downloads. However, with the company recently allowing developers to mark their listings as temporarily free, Google had to start using other metrics for this.
We’re seeing download numbers of applications and games skyrocket from 100 to over 10,000 from just one temporary free sale (especially with icon packs). So while Google still does use this as a metric in their algorithm, it’s just not as important as it was before. This can be easily compared to how YouTube switched from relying heavily on views to watch time. In a recent blog post on the Android Developers Blog, we learn about how Google is helping people find quality applications and games in Google Play.
Google says they recently enhanced both their search and discovery algorithms to better reflect application and game quality. They’re also using data from negative issues such as excessive battery usage, slow render times, and crashes. The results can be seen when you’re manually searching for an application or game, as well as when you’re just scrolling through the home page of the Google Play Store.
Since this change, the company says they’ve seen an increase in users downloading well-made applications and games, while avoiding the ones which are less stable (resulting in an uninstall). The upcoming Android O update focuses on these issues with their Android Vitals project and provides tools for developers who want to troubleshoot these types of issues. This can be huge for a developer since over a half of 1-star reviews in the Play Store cite application stability as their reason for the negative review.
Source: Android Developers Blog
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