Last week, Google announced it would be updating Google Play Store rating system. The update will make ratings more reflective of recent reviews.
The aim is for the rating system to better represent what an app is today, rather than what it used to be at the time of its launch.
According to Google, developers have been requesting this update for a long time. The current rating system does not accurately represent changes made to an app since it first appeared on the store. Instead, it simply gives an average score accumulated over a lifetime of reviews.
The new system will become available in August, but the developers can already preview their updated ratings.
A different rating algorithm is not the only new feature that might improve an app’s score. Google will also change how developers can respond to reviews. The update will introduce suggested replies generated automatically based on the text of the review. For a more personal reply, developers will be able to customize suggested option or write a response from scratch. As developers have to deal with over 100,000 reviews every day, suggested replies will help them keep up. And keeping up is important because users tend to update their rating by about +0.7 every time they get a response.
These announcements came during I/O developer conference last week. You can learn more about these and other upcoming changes on Android Developers Blog.