How does google play search ranking really work?

Some of my findings:

  • Search ranking is the same across all stores. e.g., if I type “Alarm” the ranking for my alarm clock app will be the same in US, UK or Germany store.
  • Only metadata are the things we can change to affect the seach ranking.
  • Metadata in other languages will come into effect even if you search the store in a different language. For example, if my app’s French metadata has “alarme” , searching for “alarme” in the US store will return my app too.

Somethings I really don’t understand:

  • Why does some app has a higher ranking than my app for a keyword although it’s average rating and download seems lower than my app? When I check the metadata, it seems that the keyword appears as frequent in my app as in the other app.

Any tips, experience on how to improve search ranking is welcome.

Where do you edit metadata? I was under the impression this was only for music albums.

x2 on that.

You have to “hide” it in your text.

e.g. you make a game which makes you smash car engines (great idea, somebody has to do it) and you would like to appear in the search for “stress management” you can’t just write
tags: cars, engine, smash, stress management
as google forbids that.

what you have to type is
“This app with it’s 6 different car engine types to smash is the perfect way of stress management

It looks like app “age” is a factor too. Newer apps seem to get a boost in the rankings to help with their discovery, especially since Google removed the “just in” list. That tapers off after a month or so (at least that’s my observation).

If I was Google, I would probably also try to take the click through rate into account. For example, if there is an app that comes up as #20 in the search for a specific keyword, and more users click on that than any other app higher in the list, this app seems to be highly relevant to the search and it should probably be ranked higher. I don’t know if Google actually has something like that.

The algorithm seems to change frequently. My app’s rankings change a lot, even though there is not much movement.

I click my apps multiple apps a day to see G+'s, reviews and more importantly to get the web url so as to provide to these ad networks. And if your logic is implemented, there has to be some mechanism by which you don’t ban my app because I need the web link to it (not talking about mobile play store)

By metadata I mean title/description.