Hi, I experienced some strange behavior for my 2 apps.
First app - I released it in ~December 2012. Exactly 1 year it was doing better and better every month, it started on ~ 50 downloads/day and after 1 year in December 2013 it was like 2 000 install per day. But then, in Dec 2013, exactly after 1 year after releasing (almost exactly 1 year, ± just maybe week or two) the downloads stopped increasing, stayed same for a while, and then started falling down, firstly slower, then faster and faster and just few months after they went down from 2 000 to something like 500 and still going down in such enormously fast way, that it looks my app downloads will have 0 downloads in day maybe in 1 month…
Also my second app which was released in April 2013 and was constantly increasing downloads started to fall down ALSO AFTER 1 YEAR in April 2014. Maybe it is just a coincidence, but maybe not.
Anybody experiences something like this? Is this behavior normal? Has an application something like lifecycle, let’s say 1 year, and after 1 year google just throw it somewhere down to get chance to newer apps? What should I do to get my app back on their positions?
This is something hard to predict as it may not respond to a single factor such as the ranking position. See, not only google makes changes to their search algorithm but also to the play store itself modifying how results are presented to users. From 2012 to now this varied quite a lot.
I agree. I don’t think it has something to do with the age of the app being 1 year. I’ve had spikes in downloads here and there across different time cycles, its hard to predict when or what is going on.
I agree with Toxic and Ryan. Sorry for your app mil84, and you are right when you say Google demotes on purpose old apps to let new ones be discovered. That is hard to accept when you have put a lot of work on a product that gives the same value whatever its age.
I would recommend to think about a way to make a new app reusing your work. Not the same app because google will find you, but reusing concepts, code etc.
Good luck
I had the opposite from one of my apps the downloads increase. Now i facing the problem that the uninstalls increase. I think for my experience it really depends on the reviews.
Well, actually I was thinking about this. Once my app will be “destroyed” by google and downloads will be like 50 per day or so, I was thinking about unpublishing it, preparing same app under different package name and publishing it again. I didn’t know this is against rules to unpublish some app and publish it again, or is it? If yes why, what if I for example lost my signing key and really must upload app again?
To all - thanks for your opinions. For me it was just strange, that both my apps started to slowly going down, without any reason (even if there was some, why not just 1 app, but both?). Google ranking system is real mystery for me…Everything was great, my app was rated great, and improving every month till sudden STOP by google from unknown reason. Really frustrating, ecpecially when I do not know the reason.
I have lost the signing certificate many times for many apps. Just republished them with a new signing certificate. No other option.
You may use the above reason for publishing the same app again.
Same for me with my apps. The reason you give my be correct with Google.
For me it may cause by other devs make the same app like you and me, and we lost install from them