Bert de Weerd and Tingmui Li, authors/Google Play team
When Google Play launched in 2008 with just a few hundred apps and games, it was easy for developers to get noticed. Google Play has grown rapidly, with millions of apps and games available in more than 190 countries. For users, the unique resources you provide to the Play Store (images, videos, descriptions, even the name of your app itself) are an important factor in deciding which apps and games to download.
Google Play will make your resources more and more visible, with stories and descriptions on the “Apps” and “Games” front pages. To ensure that your store details page resources help users anticipate in-app or in-game experiences and lead to meaningful downloads, we will make the following changes:
- Notice of policy changes to apply metadata
- New guidelines for store detail page preview resources
1. Application metadata policy change notice
As your app title, icon and developer name are the most important exposure elements on the product details page, we are introducing a new set of policies to ensure that these elements are identifiable and unique. The policy focuses on:
- Limit application titles to 30 characters or less;
- Prohibit keywords in ICONS, titles and developer names that reflect in-store performance and promotions;
- Remove graphic elements from app ICONS that may mislead users.
Under the upcoming policy, non-compliant app titles, ICONS and developer names will not be allowed on Google Play. You’ll see more details about this policy change later this year, including a mandatory start date.
You can review the examples of permitted and prohibited items below and consider how these changes might affect you to prepare for upcoming policy changes.
Store performance or ranking
Price and promotion information
Misleading users with Play plans and graphic elements
Emoji and repeated or continuous special characters and/or punctuation marks
2. New product details page preview resource guidelines
We will also introduce a new product detail page preview resource guide for top shots, screenshots, videos and short descriptions to show your app’s features and functionality. Resources that do not meet the guidelines cannot be promoted or featured on the main Google Play interface, such as the app and game home page.
The new guidelines for resources provided by developers focus on the following principles:
- Do preview resources accurately represent the application or game?
- Do preview resources provide enough information to help users decide whether to install or not?
- Does the preview resource not contain buzzwords like “free” or “best” but instead focus on providing meaningful information about what makes your app or game unique?
- Have preview resources been localized and made easy to understand?
To ensure that apps and games are eligible to be featured on all of Google Play’s interfaces, check out our new Store details page guidelines. We will start implementing recommendations based on these guidelines in the second half of 2021.
We hope you will benefit from the policy Preview and Preview resource Guidelines announcement as you develop this year’s roadmap, and look forward to a more helpful and active Play store with us.