Google Play Update Guide | Improve your app quality and visibility

Author/Bert de Weerd and Tingmui Li of Google Play Team

When Google Play first launched in 2008, there were only a few hundred apps and games, and developers at that time were easily noticed. With the rapid development of Google Play, millions of apps and games have been launched for audiences in more than 190 countries/regions. For users, the unique resources you provide to the Play Store (images, videos, descriptions, and even the name of your app itself) are an important factor in their decision to download which apps and games.

Google Play will display your resources more and more prominently, and display materials and descriptions on the "app" and "game" homepages. To ensure that your store listing resources can help users anticipate in-app or in-game experiences and bring meaningful downloads, we will make the following adjustments:

1. Upcoming policy changes for application metadata
2. Introduced new guidelines for store listing preview resources

1. Application metadata policy change notice

In the product detail page, since your app title, icon, and developer name are the most important exposure elements, we are preparing to launch a new set of policies to ensure the identifiability and uniqueness of these elements. The focus of this policy is :

• Limit the length of the application title to 30 characters;
• It is forbidden to use keywords that reflect its performance and promotion in the store in the icon, title, and developer name;
• Eliminate graphical elements in the app’s icons that might mislead users.

In the upcoming policy, non-compliant app titles, icons, and developer names will not be allowed to appear on Google Play. You will see more details of this policy change later this year, including the start date of enforcement.

You can review the examples of allowed and prohibited items below and consider how these changes may affect you in order to prepare for the upcoming policy changes.

store performance or ranking

price and promotional information

Misleading users' Play plans and graphic elements

Emoticons and repeated or continuous special characters and/or punctuation

2. New product detail page preview resource guidelines

We will also launch a new product detail page preview resource guide based on the feature images, screenshots, videos, and short descriptions you provide to show your app’s features and functions. If the resource does not comply with the guidelines, it cannot be promoted and recommended on the main interface of Google Play (such as the application and game homepage).

The new guidelines implemented for resources provided by developers focus on the following principles:

• Does the preview resource accurately represent the application or game?
• Do the preview resources provide enough information to help users decide whether to install or not?
• Does the preview resource contain no buzzwords such as "free" or "best", but instead focus on providing meaningful information about the uniqueness of the app or game?
• Has the preview resource been localized and made it easy to understand?

To ensure that apps and games are eligible for recommendation on all Google Play interfaces, please check our New Store Listing Guidelines . We will begin to implement recommendations based on these guidelines in the second half of 2021.

We hope that you can benefit from the policy notice and preview resource guidelines announcement when formulating this year’s roadmap, and look forward to a more helpful and active Play Store together with us.