google market 7-day warning for spam

I got an email from google today that my new app I posted to the market, has violated the spam provisions of the content policy and would be removed after 7 days if not corrected. I believe they are talking about my description, I listed a bunch of rail lines to use it on. I didn’t think this was spam though. I guess I should be glad they are giving me 7 days to correct the problem, but I’m not entirely sure what is wrong. I’ve removed the numerous named rail lines for now. My description is below, do you think it is all the rail lines mentioned?

Stop Alarm works with all public transportation systems here in the United States, it’s great for daily commuters on the MBTA, Muni Metro, Metro, MetroRail, Max light Rail, SEPTA, DART, Denver RTD, UTA TRAX, Metrolink, Central Link, VTA Light Rail, The T, RTA Streetcars, Newark Light Rail, LYNX, Portland Streetcar, River Line, Sprinter, Tide Light Rail, Memphis RTA Trolley, Tacoma Link, TECO Line Streetcars, Kenosha Transit, PATCO, and almost every other rail, bus, or trolley system in the country.

Stop Alarm can use both GPS and mobile phone towers to track your posistion and then set off an alarm when you’re close to your destination. Stop alarm allows you to continue working on your smartphone without having to worry about being distracted and missing your stop. It’s customized to turn on only during the time you normally commute to work or school and then turns itself off automatically.

Stop Alarm works with all major european public transportation systems too, including the Eurostar, the Paris Metro,
Metropolitana di Roma, NS Hispeed, Arriva Netherlands, Syntus, Connexxion, ACTS, Captrain, SJ, London Underground, Northern Ireland Railways, and British Rail. It also works with most other bus, trams, or trolleys within range of gps satellites around the world.

Stop alarm is a free ad supported app. If you like the app please share it with your friends and please rate the app for us thanks! If you’re experiencing issues with the app please email us so we can fix it before posting negative feedback on this page, thanks!

Yes, I reckon that is the problem. At first glance, your description looks very spammy. At least to me, who has spent a lot of time in SEO efforts. I can imagine a reviewer at Google taking one look and saying “that’s spam”.

Maybe changing it to a list format might work better? Like this:


Stop Alarm works with all public transportation systems here in the United States, it’s great for daily commuters on all of the following networks:

  • MBTA
  • Muni Metro
  • Metro, MetroRail
  • Max light Rail
  • SEPTA, DART & Denver RTD
  • UTA TRAX
  • Metrolink, Central Link & VTA Light Rail
  • The T
  • RTA Streetcars
  • Newark Light Rail
  • LYNX
  • Portland Streetcar, River Line & Sprinter
  • Tide Light Rail
  • Memphis RTA Trolley
  • Tacoma Link, TECO Line Streetcars
  • Kenosha Transit, PATCO
    and almost every other rail, bus, or trolley system in the country.

That looks a little less spammy to me, even though it’s the same content. Ultimately though Google seems to take a pretty hard stance on “keyword stuffing” as they call it. You might just have to reduce the number of keywords you use - as much as it will hurt your rankings!

I think david is pretty right - indeed he is more into SEO than me for sure.

At least your do have some value for the searchers also, because they may search for eaxactly that on a specific network so that should be ok. What I am not sure about is, if you are allowed to use their names, because I think that are trademarks.

I would suggest like david to put it in a list, so it does not look spammy. And also I would make the list slightly smaller, so nobody can complain about it

What’s the email address? I got a similar email and it ended up being spam itself.

[email protected]

I don’t believe it was a fake email.

Yeah sounds legit. The email I received was from gmail.com

To add to this, I got an email from Google to ask me to remove the following from my description:

Similar games: X, Y, Z

At least they emailed us first and didnt just suspend the app.

Just make a sentence out of it … :slight_smile: maybe thats better

I’ve seen this in a lot on Match 3 game descriptions:
“If you liked Bejeweled, you’ll love this!”

I do think there is some legitimacy to that usage.

I wonder if “putting it in a sentence” and limiting it to just one or two games are enough for Google to give it an Okay.

Maybe you put in a little too much examples. At the moment it looks like a big list just to get more hits. Most examples are 3 items long. I think you over did it when the list of examples is longer than the actual description.

It is just a descriptive way of telling game mechanics with well known examples - it is not spam just because it uses names of other games in it - it is spam when it looks like spam :slight_smile: easy as that :wink:

I was refering to the train routes :slight_smile:

Well, it was part of the prep for getting featured.