Google has announce a new update for app promotion on Google Play, advising they will now be promoting better quality apps and games – ones that perform better and don’t crash – on Google Play.
Google has conducted an internal review on Play Store entries, finding apps with 1-star ratings mainly had complaints about things such as excessive battery usage, slow render times, and crashes. Moving forward, Google has updated their search and discovery algorithms to surface apps which don’t have complaints about these things.
The changes haven’t been brought in without Google implementing tools for helping developers to improve their apps. Google announced their Vitals program to improve performance issues including those relating to Battery Life, Security, Startup Time and Stability in their apps at Google I/O earlier this year. The Vitals tool, which includes a pre-launch report that reports on issues on popular devices before they hit them, is available in the Google Play console for developers.
According to TechCrunch, the updates to Google Play search have been trialled with a small group of users already, with the expanded search rolling out to the rest of users accessing Google Play over the next week.
