To combat fake apps and services on its Play Store, Google announced an enhanced filtering and detection mechanisms on Google Play. The new filters will prevent app developers from publicizing their apps in a deceitful manner. With the new filters, Google aims at providing unbiased results to users. It will, in turn, boost app popularity for deserving and honest developers.
Google published a post on Android Developers Blog, wherein, it stated that the new filter would stop the manipulative app from appearing on Play Store's discovery system. The filter aims at detecting and filtering manipulative attempts such as fake reviews and paid ratings. Also, the developers who will keep promoting malicious content and behavior - will be handed a red card and their app will get removed from the store.
In the blog post, Kazushi Nagayama, Search Quality Analyst, and Andrew Ahn, Product Manager, wrote,"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."
We think that the detection of fake install would be simple but outlining fake reviews and rating would be a hard task for Google. It would be interesting to see how the new filter works on the Play Store. We hope developers take a cue from these newly imposed guidelines and make necessary amendments in their app.
