Buying 5 * reviews and G+'s

Since we know that lots of 5star reviews and G+ ratings push an app to the top of the list, it seems one can buy your way there with sufficient installs.

Has anyone used any service that does this ?

I haven’t done this, but I’ve got 5 or 6 of my friends to review it (and hopefully give me a 5 star) :slight_smile:

Is it worth it? Make a smart dialog asking for reviews in a good moment (for example - not after the player lost a game, haha) and you will get hundreds (it you have many users who like your app/game).

I’m getting 1-2 emails a week with such offers. Keep in mind they breach Google policy and, having in mind recent Play cleanup(s), Google will, sooner or later, punish apps using these services. IMO it’s not worth it. As @Magnesus wrote above - it’s much better and safe to ask your users for a review or +1 at the right moment. Looking at your portfolio I think it should be very easy to get 5* reviews :slight_smile:
In fact with one of the games we’ve published 1.5 years ago (the game is RIP now) we used a simple trick. “Rate us” message was displayed when a player won three games in a row or opened an up for a 10th time. As you can imagine it worked really well.

I understand mind, sometimes you need to cheat a little bit, otherwise can’t be. Simple.

If you will open a thread asking for review it with 5 stars, probably people here will do it. At least i can give you two 5 stars). I read in one forum, there was a guy who can do it, but never used his service, and can’t say what is results, and does he speak English or no)).

Hi mind,

I just downloaded your Wordhereo. I love it! I really love the graphics, the animations, the animated popups. Plus- the game is addictive! I went ahead and gave it a 5 star. :slight_smile:

Very professionally done.

Edit:
I just gave your Anagram Hero a 5 star - I see that’s where you need the reviews.

the ‘standard’ way of doing it is something along the lines of:
[only after the user has had the app for 3 days] after the users has been playing it for more than 90 seconds, come up with a dialog saying something like, ‘Like this app? rate it or give it a g+’ and have 3 buttons, Sure!, Maybe later, and No Thanks. This means that you will only get good reviews! only users who didn’t uninstall it straight away will review it and only users who actually like it will review it! The rest will just say No Thanks.
The problem is you can’t tell if they have actually reviewed it so you can’t tell if you should stop showing the dialog. The way I do it is:
If they tap Sure! it will open their browser to my app and set it to never show the dialog again (Just assume that they will review it)
if they tap Maybe Later it will wait another 3 days before asking them again
If they tap No Thanks, it will never show the dialog again.

Hey, have you ever heard of a popular Chinese word “shua bang”…well, it’s now the most popular way for small developers to get to the top place on app stores…as this is teh cheapest and the fastest way to go there though…of course also lots of such companies who specialize in “shuabang”…

maybe you will know more about how it works by this article:

Shuabang: The Great Evil in China - Business Insider

That’s interesting. Makes sense given how many new users iOS and Android get everyday, giving even more value to those “top lists”.