This week, my game’s install rate on Google Play Store has decreased from a sustained average of around 12,000/day, to just 5000/day, despite the fact that the game’s search ranking in the store hasn’t changed at all.
Are you guys experiencing the same drop?
UPDATE 1 - June 24th
This problem seems to be generalized and many developers are affected by it.
Possible cause:
The “Similar Apps” sections below game listing pages on Google Play Store seem to be buggy, and our games are no longer shown there at all.
Not caused by:
Inaccurate installs reported on the console;
Android vitals;
Search rankings;
Summer exams;
World Cup.
What we’re doing:
Some of us have contacted Google to report this problem, and we expect replies sometime next week;
We’ll be posting here any relevant updates in the following days.
Forum member @j0hka has managed to get a response from the live chat with Google: “The issue has already been escalated and our relevant team is investigating it.”
UPDATE 3 - June 26th
More devs have received replies from Google support, but so far nothing helpful. The replies have generally been “we’re looking into it and we’ll get back to you later”;
The Discord group has reached more than 260 members, and between 70 to 100 of them are being present there at any given time.
UPDATE 4 - June 27th
More answers came from Google support, but still no useful ones;
The Discord group has more than 370 members. The invitation link above has been updated and is now functional again (the previous one expired);
An article was published on Gamasutra about this problem (see links and info about this on the Discord group in the “Pinned Messages”);
The Unity Forums moderator @zombiegorilla has requested to keep conversations on this thread civil and to refrain from mob mentality, and from “torches and pitchforks” attitudes against Google.
UPDATE 5 - June 28th
A new reply came from Google Play Developer Support requesting evidence that the “Similar Apps” is malfunctioning, and a reply with the necessary evidence was provided to them;
The Discord group now has more than 650 members.
UPDATE 6 - June 29th
Still no definitive information from Google, but they claim to be looking into the issue carefully;
The Discord group has reached more than 930 members.
UPDATE 7 - July 6th
Even after evidence has been provided more than a week ago that the “Similar Apps” section is broken, the replies from Google have been the same generic templates, in which they haven’t acknowledged any malfunction of their system, insisting that everything is fine, and they’re “focusing on app quality”;
As such, it’s unlikely that there will be any improvement coming soon, so the best we can hope for is that they’ll change the algorithm again in a few months, and it will be less bad;
The Discord group now has more than 1500 members.
UPDATE 8 - July 21st
It’s been one month since this problem begun, and still no improvement;
Since yesterday, the “Similar Apps” section has been removed entirely from both the mobile version and the desktop version of Google Play Store. On mobile, pressing the green button called “Similar” yields an empty list with the message “No results found” (this is the case for any game or app);
The Discord group has reached more than 1700 members.
UPDATE 9 - July 25th
The “Similar Apps” section is back since yesterday, but still broken.
Hi,
There is 60% drop in overall installs, its not summer exams…
three days back google play’s crawler refreshed data, and all similar items are messed up… after wards all our accounts and games are on a continous decline… no words from google
That’s interesting, I didn’t knew that, thanks for the info.
Indeed, it seems that there are very few games listed in the “Similar Apps”, or “You Might Also Like” recommendations, and not only that, but some of those recommended apps seem also to be quite random.
We’ve experienced the same issue during the last couple of days, downloads have gone down quite significantly across several of our games on Google Play. Is this a known issue that you think will be fixed or what is happening?
For me, this problem started on 20th of June, which (coincidentally or not) is right after the day when Google Play started adding that security metadata to all the apps (they announced this a long time ago and they started implementing it from 19th of June).
Yes it started for us on the 20th as well, I read the other forums as well, no one seems to know what the cause is.
I wonder how many developers this is effecting? Most may not notice anything until Monday.
Please post any findings here and I’ll do the same.
Very scary, but most likely it’s not something we’ve done. Either it’s a glitch and it will go back or they may have updated something that changed the discoverability our apps.
Have anyone noticed if you’ve lost some featuring on the store?
I’ve sent emails to the contacts I have at Google Play and hopefully they’ll respond soon.
Oh yeah, in the “Similar Apps” and “You Might Also Like” recommendations listed at the bottom of game’s listing pages. Those are really messed up now: I checked the recommendations on the pages of my own game and other games from the flight simulator genre, and they show up all sorts of games that have nothing to do with flight sims (farming, medical, fishing, pool, races, etc…). While previously, my game would be recommended as similar to almost all other flight sims, now it’s not being listed at all in the “Similar Apps” and “You Might Also Like”.
Ok, but not anywhere else like in “What’s hot” or similar featuring? Feels like that alone wouldn’t cause drops this big.
According to our analytics tool we used to get a lot of installs from country “null”, those are completely gone now.
Don’t know if it’s related but it might be.
I don’t know where the “What’s hot” section is displayed, but I can’t find it anywhere on the home page or game category pages, so I can’t confirm. Plus, my game wasn’t featured anyway on other sections like “Trending Games”, or “Popular Games”.
Same here, 20.000 daily download drop down to 7.000 yesterday and probably 3.000 today.
Glad to know it happen to a lot of people and make me hope google are running some tests and change on search algorythm.
I’m using mobile action and all my keywords ranking and catergory ranking are almost the same, so this is very strange. But my revenue dropped down too so the problem is not only about stats.
What is your app? I noticed a lot of flight simulators in my app’s “Similar” tab earlier and my app has nothing to do with them. Maybe there’s a connection?
My app is “Turboprop Flight Simulator 3D” (the link is in the post signature, below this text).
There are only a few flight simulators that get featured in that “Similar” section (including on games that are completely unrelated), but mine isn’t among them.
Yeah I see the farming and medical apps on your app’s similar page. My app is “Hydraulic Press Pocket” and the similar apps are off. I used to have PewDiePie’s Tuber Simulator there which is similar but now it has wedding and farming games to name a few.
Yeah, I see your similar apps are completely off also, and those flight games over there are the same ones I keep encountering on numerous other “Similar” sections. This explains why a few developers are seeing big boosts in installs these days, while most of us are losing out.