no they didnt, they just got rid of spammers which opened up some spots for decent apps
I like the fact when better apps than mine rank above me, I am ok with that… but what I am not ok with is a bunch of crap taking up top rankings… hopefully this change will give decent apps some spotlight they deserve.
I highly doubt it. I live in the U.K and I have a few developer friends here who have had loads of traffic loss.
What is happening to your music app is not magic right. If you haven’t done anything on your own like adding keywords or translating app then some external factor has come into play. Maybe your app was featured in some music magazine or it is now more frequently being shown in similar apps or it is now being shown as recommended app on home page of play store of some country.
The best way to analyze is to check your daily ranks in appannie to get the country where your rank improved in that time period.
Yes, I can also see a steady decline week after week since Nov 4 - so it DOES seem to suggest an algorithm change.
With algorithm changes, there is probably what seems like a reasonable thing to do - so I would guess the Google team for this would make changes then see if the results are “reasonable” - and clearly better than before. And maybe they would keep a list of benchmark apps to measure how such changes affect them - and if “that is what we really want” and so on …
It could even be something like Google penalizing if an app Description mentions a keyword more than 3 times or something. That is, the earlier recommendation by most websites is that developers mention each keyword 5 times (and not more since that doesn’t help). But what if Google starts penalizing if too many of the top repeated words in a Description have 5 or more occurrences (or 4 or more ?) - this would be ONE way to see if a developer has “gamed” their Description.
So it could be any number of such things - and something as innocuous as emphasizing apps in rankings which have better uninstall/install rate (compared to earlier) - and that subtle change could make difference for many apps.
Would you say your app which improved was “pretty good” in your opinion - i.e. it deserved to get better recognition (what a question !) - but for example it has a high retention rate or something. And did you see a corresponding change in rankings in the main Category (if so, then the shift in rankings would be responsible for the download number change).
Has anyone else noticed a change in the Google Developer Console graph for installs per day etc. ?
I don’t have a screenshot to compare - but it just looked different and odd. Then I noticed that ALL the country stats (daily installs) were the IDENTICAL graph almost - you see how the curves for each country are BOUNDED by the one above and below - when in reality sometimes some country would go up and another which is above it may go down - I seem to recall just a few days ago that that was the type of graphs that were shown.
Then looking further on those graphs for daily install - turn off/on a country in the middle between two countries and see the impact on the graph - do you see that the top most graph ALSO goes down. So something screwy going on with their graphing. Additionally the color labelling is off - the U.S. has highest downloads but is shown in GREEN (which is the bottom-most graph).
Well, such a thing would be publicly visible in the appannie.com rankings for your app and the competitor apps that were above and below it. One would think that increase in downloads would have some similar change in rankings visible on appannie.com.
No, like I said in a previous post, it has increased in downloads in all geos at the same ratio as it has always been.
You can see that reflected in the screenshot I posted with the top 3 countries.
AppAnnie only reinforces this with significant ranking raises in tons of countries.
My app is suddenly doing much better due to the changes Google has made to their algorithm(s).
I also thought something screwy was going on with their graphing, but it does make sense. Each colour fill represents how many downloads come from the parameter, regardless of the value to the left of the graph. In this case the green fill contributes about 40% of my total downloads. The other 60% is split between an array of other countries, with only the top two countries out of that 60% displayed on that graph.
So in this way, the combined parameter values will equal the point at which the uppermost parameter is following on the graph.
I hope that makes sense, its hard to put into words.
Yes, google has just changed the way values are being visualized in the second diagram. It used to display plain values, now it shows cumulative values. That’s how we need to interpret country breakdown (and others), from now on. This also explains similarity between curves, and the behavior, when checking/unchecking countries.
I see so it is showing cumulative values - so each country graph “layered” on top of the previous graph - this is why the U.S. (biggest numbers) graph is at the bottom.
I am not sure this is more illustrative than what they used to show before - now it is HARDER to see the movements in the individual countries - though the resultant graph IS “prettier”. Form winning over function ?
So the graph IS representative of the overall impact (so changes to a smaller country are less prominent) - however sometimes one wants to know the trends for individual countries in a magnified way so one can see if some change they made to keywords etc. is having an impact on rankings etc.
While I have not noticed any significant change for my 2 apps for keyword rankings (for the few keywords that I monitor) - however I have seen in general app browsing for other apps that some of the popular apps seem to appear in search results which seem unrelated to that app.
It is possible that Google Play ranking algorithms - or sorry, search results - are now showing not just pure technical search results, but ALSO a fraction of results from “what the user might ALSO be interested in” - i.e. a “Similar apps” data now being used also.
This would explain why sometimes apps are appearing in search results which DON’T have the keyword being searched in their Description etc. (!?)
Perhaps this is what is causing the change now - and impact of maybe (just guessing here) - that while your ranking may not change much for your major keywords (if you already were ranking in top 20 for that keyword) but if you ranked 30-40 for some keywords then THAT ranking will be heavily affect (just guessing I have no data) - and your place will be replaced by some suggestions from the “Similar Apps” section.
This MIGHT be derived from studies (if there were such studies - again guesses only) within Google of the “quality” of search results - i.e. “what type of results give better click-through for users” - and they MAY have found that putting in some suggestions from “Similar Apps” may get better response (thus displacing those “weak results”).
For apps like mine - which are NOT seeing significant ranking declines for their major keywords (or keywords that I thought represent the app), but ARE seeing steady declines in their daily download numbers (from a ranking algorithm change supposedly) - may be from the cumulative effect of all the “long tail” keywords - i.e. the keywords you do not watch (but are in your Description) and which are low ranked - but the combined impact of all of those minor keywords still may have been getting you downloads - now that Similar Apps type stuff is replacing those “weak ranking” appearances, it may thus show up in your lower download numbers …
Just a guess - this would not explain the rise of some supposedly forgotten (low downloads until Nov 4) apps - as A1ka1ine reported. It is possible that app figured in a lot of app’s Similar Apps section (perhaps was ranked low in those lists) - but that is allowing it to appear in search results for other keywords (because of the cumulative strength of it’s Similar Apps performance).
Just total guessing here …
I should add to above post that I also occasionally monitor the placement of my apps in the “Similar Apps” section of other apps (those apps which figure in MY apps’ Similar Apps section).
And this placement does not seem to have undergone much change - i.e. I still list on similar position in those places as before.
So maybe can exclude that as a possible reason for slow and steady declines in downloads (or steady rise for other apps - which may conversely benefit from that change in Google ranking algorithms etc.).
Could this be a language/location issue? I’m in Thailand and my apps have also fallen dramatically. I used to do a search in thai language and my apps would account for about 30% of the top 20 apps because they are in the thai language. Now i search in thai language and the apps that show are not in thai language. This is completely pointless for those who cannot read English. It’s difficult to learn English if you cannot read English.