Google They have grown tired of developers cheating with the name and icon of applications to try to deceive users, and to avoid this bad practice they are going to take drastic measures.

The company has advanced some of the changes to the Google Play policy that will take effect throughout this year, both for an application’s metadata and its preview.

So are the next changes in the metadata of the applications

Since the title, icon and developer name of an application are the most important discovery items in the Play Store, Google announces these new policies to keep these items “recognizable and unique” thanks to these changes:

  • Limit the length of app names to 30 characters. ^ Ban keywords that imply your ranking, promotion in the icon, in the title and in the name of the developer.
  • Remove graphic elements that can mislead users on the application icon.

Google shows us with some examples of what will no longer be allowed when they launch the new policy for developers in the remainder of the year:

  • Performance or rating of the store: Developers will not be able to add text or graphics to the application name, developer name or application icon with its supposed position in the ranking of the most downloaded applications.
Bad example Store performance

These are the reasons why Google can remove an application from the Play Store

  • Price and promotional information: They will not be able to add texts or graphics to promote offers. It will no longer be allowed for developers to put if an application is on sale, if it is free or if it does not have ads.
Bad example Price Promotion
  • Reproduce graphic elements that deceive users: Nor may they use icons or texts that try to deceive the user by pretending that they have an update available, notifications or that encourage their download in the title text.
Badexample Playprograms Categories
  • Emoticons and special characters: Finally, developers will not be able to make use of emoticons or special symbols, or the use of uppercase text to highlight keywords as a claim. Only the name of the applications can use capital letters, but not the additional text.
Bad Example Emoticons

New rules for previewing the Play Store tabs

Also the Google Play team has announced a preview of the new policies for the preview of the applications, that is, for the screenshots, videos and description of the applications.

The new rules will focus on the following questions:

  • Do the preview items accurately represent the app or game?
  • Do the preview items provide enough information to help users decide whether to install? Are the preview elements free of buzzwords like “free” or “better” and instead focused on providing meaningful information about the unique aspects of your app or game?
  • Are the preview items located correctly and easy to read?

When Google puts the new policies into effect, it will remove from its store all apps that don’t comply with all of these new rules. Google wants all applications to reflect reality and not make up their title, icon, screenshots or promotional videos to trick the user into downloading their applications.

Via | Google

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