Google (NASDAQ:$GOOGL) just announced that it will be rolling out a change to its Play Store. The changes will give precedence to better-performing apps – those that experience fewer crashes and don’t drain your battery – over apps that have bugs and performance issues.
What’s the point? Well, according to Google, this new ranking algorithm will help to make sure that the best apps are the ones being promoted, which can lead to an increase in app usage and engagement.
Google decided to go forward with these changes after having realized that around half of the 1-star reviews on the Play Store were centered around app stability problems.
Not surprisingly, apps that don’t function well frustrate users, who then turn to the reviews section to express their complaints. As time goes on, a handful of bad reviews and low star ratings have the ability to impact the app’s place in the charts and search results. However, if an app has enough popularity, a massive number of installs can still override negative reviews, thus pushing the app back up the ladder.
With this new ranking algorithm update, developers with buggy apps are now being forced to address their issues. If not, they will be penalized.
The Mountain View, California-based company commenced rolling out the change this week, but only to a small sample size of users. However, it’s already seeing noteworthy results. After the update, Google found that those who installed higher quality apps would then go on to use them more, and uninstall them less.
The algorithm changes will continue to roll out over the next week across the Play Store worldwide, Google says. As a result, it will affect both the charts and the search results.
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