Google has announced that it is rolling out an improved detection and filtration system to get rid of shady and low-quality apps in Play Store. This news came from a recent blog post on the official Android developers blog by Google.
As of October 2016, Play Store boasts more than 2,200,000 apps. However, numbers alone cannot judge the quality of the marketplace alone. Over the years, due to lack of regulatory measures and open source development tools, Play Store has accumulated some less than desirable apps. Many developers use illegitimate methods like fake installs, paid or electronic reviews and even ratings through incentive programs to promote these sub standard applications over more deserving ones.
It seems that Google is now finally ready to make sure that such apps do not show up when users search for an application to fulfill their genuine need. Starting from today, Play Store will hide apps which may have attempted to manipulate the placement of their apps through methods listed above and more. Talking about these apps on their blog, Google says:
“These attempts not only violate the Google Play Developer Policy but also harm our community of developers by hindering their chances of being discovered or recommended through our systems. Ultimately, they put the end users at risk of making wrong decisions based on inaccurate, unauthentic information.”
This is a back-end change and will be automatically available to all users without the need to update the Play Store application. So next time you want to search something on Google’s App Store, expect much better and relevant search results.
