When we are going to look for a new application or game for our Android device it is very important to look at its ratings and reviews, since through the opinions of the users we can decide which application or game we are going to download from the Play Store among all the alternatives.
In the almost ten years of existence of Google Play has been using the same system for app ratings and reviews, but this is going to change by the end of next year. Google Play is going to apply a couple of changes to make the ratings and reviews more useful and reliable.
Ratings and reviews tailored to you and your device
At present, when showing the evaluation or score of an application or game, the Play Store shows the average of all the reviews from around the world, without distinguishing by countries and devices. The most it does so far is to display the reviews in our language, but we will see more changes soon. Google Play will distinguish ratings and reviews by countries and devices.
This is a change that many users and developers have been asking Google for years, since sometimes the ratings of one area can negatively affect other areas due to a bad translation or error that only affected one country, or when a error that only affects mobile phones also lowers the score on tablets.
To solve this Google Play will personalize the experience of ratings and reviews, and will do it with a number of improvements that they will launch during several quarters:
- As of November 2021: phone users will start to see country-specific qualifications.
- In early 2022: users of other form factors, such as tablets, Chromebooks, and watches, will start to see ratings device specific where they are.
Thus, when we soon consult the ratings and reviews of an application from our watch, we will see the ratings and reviews that were made on the version for watches of that application and by users in our country. The valuation of this watch application will no longer be distorted by the opinions of the mobile version.
This change will also allow us to know the most popular and best rated applications and games in our country by not doing the average with everyone. So these changes may penalize the evaluation of applications that are not translated into our language.
The developers will also see these news in the Play Store Console, where they will soon be able to see the ratings for each type of device in their statistics. This will allow them for what type of devices they have to improve the experience. Also your new statistics will be more flexible to allow you to select more time periods to see how your ratings have evolved over time.
Via | Google
In Engadget Android | How to check your reviews and ratings on the Google Play Store