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Google's Message To Developers: Fix Your App's Performance Issues Else See Them Demoted On Play Store (techcrunch.com)
Google today announced it's rolling out a change to its Play Store so that better-performing apps -- meaning those that experience fewer crashes and those that don't drain your smartphone battery -- will be ranked higher than apps with bugs and other performance issues. From a report: The goal with this new ranking algorithm is to ensure that the best apps are being promoted, which in turn leads to increased app usage and engagement, the company says. The impetus for this change came after Google realized that around half of the 1-star reviews on the Google Play Store were about app stability problems. Apps that don't work well frustrate users, who often turn to the reviews to leave a complaint. Over time, a number of bad reviews and low star ratings can impact the app's place in the charts and search results. But if an app is popular enough, a large number of installs can still, to some extent, override its negative reviews and push the app back up into a higher position than it rightly deserves.
stop "other search engines" nonsense automatically adding every website search form I use to your collection of things you try to do on my behalf. Til you stop doing stupid shit in your apps, you have no business telling anyone else what to do.
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
https://xkcd.com/937/
https://xkcd.com/1098/
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The Facebook app is an overbloated piece of crap. Will Google+ finally take over?
Why not let the review system speak for itself?
Let people rate the app on a scale of 1-5 or whatever, and just let that rating do its job.
Did you ever see a rating system that actually works? The 5-star system is fail. When it was invented, the idea was that 3-star would be average/good, and 5 star excellent. In practice we see that anything not 5-star is seen as a complaint, both by reviewers and developers. Removing any headroom for stuff that actually exceeds expectations.
Also, a single person `trolling` a one-star might take a rating on a less-popular app down severely. But several people complaining with 2-3 stars will not effect a zillion shills.
What does work (imho) is text-based reviews: people sincerely telling what they think. But that takes time and effort from those reviewers.
While at it, google-and others- should please forbid those in-app begging for reviews. That nagging alone is enough to unleash the 1-star troll in me, though usually i suppress that and just uninstall.