Play Store will Now Prefer the Recent Reviews to Rate the Apps
Till now, Google has revealed many new launches and numerous changes to its services at its annual I/O conference going on in California, U.S., including new features added to the Google Assistant, the launch of new Assistant-powered home hub under the Nest brand, the launch of Pixel 3a and 3a XL, etc. And along with bringing new APIs and a refreshed Google Play Console data to the Play Store, the company has now introduced how the Play Store ratings will work.
About two years ago, Apple made a change to the App Store on how the ratings would work for the apps. The company allowed the app developers to decide whether or not their ratings will reset to with every new update. In a similar way, Google has also revealed that from now, the apps won’t get rated on the basis of their previous performances, but after updates, those will be rated on their latest reviews and other factors.
Reviews and ratings have been crucial to the promotion of a product, and in fact, to the promotion of apps on the app stores, as people read the reviews before they install one on to their devices. In recent years, due to the old bad app reviews, the average rating of certain apps was degrading them. Despite new updates, the old reviews were also part of the average rating. But now the new average rating calculations will consider the latest reviews and updates to rate the app, as to give more preference to the latest reviews.
“You told us you wanted a rating based on what your app is today, not what it was years ago, and we agree,” said Milena Nikolic, the engineering director leading Google Play Console.
Google is also working on a new reply feature, that will be in response to the user reviews. The developer will get to choose among three options to reply to a review. These options will include an auto-generated response, which the user can directly select and send, customise it and send or write a response and send. For now, those responses will be in English, but Google will soon add some other languages to the system.
The company has revealed that the average rating calculations will be updated for all the android apps. The developers can preview the new ratings on their Play Store Console from today onwards, while the end users will be able to see it only after August this year.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.
