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Google Play giving developers more insight into how users are discovering Android apps

App Store curation is a trend on both Android and iOS with Google last year introducing an Editors’ Choice section featuring editorial lists and recommendations. Google is now providing developers with more insight into how users are discovering apps on the Play Store.

Acquisition reports in the Google Play Console are adding a number of new metrics, specifically a breakdown of Organic traffic, which Google notes is “usually the largest or second largest source of store listing visits and installs.”

Organic traffic is made up of people who come to your store listing while exporting or searching the Play Store. These visitors might find your app in a seasonal collection, from featuring, or while searching for a specific use case or term.

Organic data notes whether users arrived via searching or exploring, which includes browsing the homepage, visiting a category list, or viewing related apps. Developers can also see what search terms led people to their apps, and which resulted in the most installs.

The Console will also start noting installs by users who did not visit the full app page in the Play Store. This includes preview listings in Play Store search results that also details whether people perused though screenshots and other video assets.

Google has rolled out this data to select partners and early feedback shows developers already optimizing their apps, especially the in-app onboarding process to note the “features related to the most popular searches people made when discovering their app or game, highlighting and reinforcing the benefits.”

Using the information about popular search terms, several developers plan to change their app or game’s Google Play listing to reflect user interests better. This change involves adjusting the descriptions and screenshots to tie more directly into the top search terms.


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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com