Denied access to Top Charts

Android Income Reports
1

Hello,
I’ve been making apps for some time and earning some money.

My newest app is not appearing in any top charts even if it has a lot of success:

  • over 15.000 downloads daily
  • over 1000 ratings with an average of around 4.0

I have invested a lot of ads in this app(probably worth more than 1000$) and it seems Google doesn’t want it showing in Top Charts.

Has anyone else experienced this ? Probably my developer account is under supervision by Google and I should give up on it and start with a fresh developer account.

2

How long ago was your app released. First few days you won’t be on top charts no matter the downloads. Also how are you checking if you are in the charts? Maybe you are there but not in your country - getting 15k doanloads per day isn’t really posibble without being in some charts.

3

I use several sites that track rankings: appbrain and appannie.
The app is 9 days old.
15000 downloads is the result of promotion of the app. As I said, it’s a big investment.
If I have to give up on the developer account I will have a huge loss.

I was wondering if anyone else has seen apps denied access to top charts.

4

Could it be because I don’t have monetization/promotion from Google and I use other networks ?
Maybe they are beginning to be more aggressive with competition for monetization.

5

It takes several days to appear in the charts and also multiple days to disappear. Altogether google rankings have a time lag of about 1 week to reach the peak in the charts to match the amount of your downloads.

6

@StevePof: I am not new to GPlay. Every app that I’ve had, appeared after 2-3 days of launch in the New Free top charts. They disappear on 30-th day with precision. After 30 days they remain only in Top Charts(so not in the new apps).

What I’m talking about with this new app is that Google keeps it COMPLETELY off the charts: not in new apps, not anywhere. And we are now in the 10th day from launch. Please don’t tell me that it will takes more than 10 days to appear in the charts because I will not believe you.

This means that Google has a new way to cheat us of our money.

7

Google some time penalize apps with moving them off the charts if it suspects up-normal downloads or rating and keyword spam
but in some cases they sent a warning email
So am not sure if this is your case or not but it happened to me before

8

@Pharaoh: thanks for your reply, so this has happened before. In my case I received no warning.
For a few weeks now Google approves each app before it appears on the store. So you can no longer launch an app if it is not reviewed. My app passed this review so I don’t understand why they would penalize it afterwards. There is no keyword spam, I have checked word frequency and distribution. There are no incentivised downloads or paid reviews. Everything is by the book: user downloads occur because of ads and cross-promotion.

It makes no sense at all, other than making us lose money.

I will just have to accept the money loss and change developer account.

9

Google monitors the Top Lists. Sometimes if the app looks too spammy or shady or deceptive, they will remove it from the Top Lists.

10

I don’t think so. In my country, the top new free chart in some categories are filled with spammy/shady apps.
@aztek, your app does not appear in top free, top new free and trending? Does your 15k daily downloads consistent for 10 days?

11

15k install per day for which country? GPS ranks per install per country…so if you have 15K install per day scattered around every single country you won’t rank in any country…or you will rank very low still. I have reached #1 in Malasia for Racing Games and this was the case…I had to get 12K install all Mal users to rank there.

12

If you have your downloads divided to every country in this world, with 15.000 downloads a day you’d be ranked everywhere, not nowhere.

13

this actually happened to one of my apps right after I updated it 4 days ago.

my app was ranking #5 in one european country, and was on a huge gain for several weeks.

now its out of the ranks everywhere (according to appannie). My downloads dropped from 3k per day to 1.5k per day.

14

15k a day is not a small number, OP should at least show up in some lists, at least in top new free for sure.

15

You’re right, he should show up in Morocco or some other country…hummm…weird…shouldn’t take that long to rank…mine ranked within 2 days…he could be stuck in some glitch. Recently Google has been doing some work to the ranking…one of my apps went from 140 to 47 to 200 to 45 in a matter of 5 days for a certain keyword.