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Google Says It Will Start Downranking Non-Tablet Apps In the Play Store (arstechnica.com) 50

Posted by BeauHD from the go-big-or-get-downranked dept.
Google is changing the Play Store ranking algorithms to increase the visibility of apps that better support large screens. Google detailed the changes in a blog post: "Apps and games that adhere to our large screen app quality guidelines will now be ranked higher in search and Apps and Games Home. This helps users find apps that resize well, aren't letterboxed, and support both portrait and landscape orientations. Editors' Choice and other curated collections and articles will also consider these criteria going forward, creating new featuring opportunities for optimized apps." Ars Technica reports: The large-screen app guidelines have various tiers, but they recommend keyboard, mouse, and stylus support, a two-pane tablet layout, drag-and-drop support, and foldable display awareness. The post also reiterates some improvements that Google has already rolled out, like showing tablet screenshots to tablet users and downranking apps that crash a lot.

The big news is that the search results will switch to a two-pane layout on big screens. The search result list will live on the left-hand side, and tapping on each result will load a details page on the right. Previously, the results page was a stretched-out phone interface, with results on the left and nothing on the right. It would be nice if the top charts got this two-pane design, too, but that hasn't changed yet. Google says these changes are "just the beginning of our journey in creating a tailored Play Store experience for large screens." So hopefully, Google's developers will follow Google's developer guidelines soon.
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Google Says It Will Start Downranking Non-Tablet Apps In the Play Store More

Google Says It Will Start Downranking Non-Tablet Apps In the Play Store

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  • Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rlwinm ( 6158720 ) on Friday July 28, 2023 @08:45AM (#63721358)
    And what about apps where they are designed to be used on the go - where a tablet would be impractical? Do they just get punished for no good reason. Google has long since lost the things which made them a household name. In fact their main product, search, is now all but useless. I was searching recently for a specific technical spec. I put my keywords in quotes. Google found stuff that wasn't close. I went to Bing and found it on the first try (and I'm no Microsoft fan either).

    Google is all about automating everything without concern for the corner cases.

    • Sounds like one of the big players has some excess tablets they need to move.

    • Totally agree that Google is way worse than it used to be. Accidentally moderated wrong so commenting to undo that.

  • Why (Score:3)

    by BigZee ( 769371 ) on Friday July 28, 2023 @08:53AM (#63721376)
    Why is this only happening now and not 10 years ago?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why is this only happening now and not 10 years ago?

      Because artificially decreasing the visibility of certain apps irrespective of their profitability because they don't fit corporate managements 'vision' for the future of mobile apps is anti-competitive crap and Google didn't think they'd bought enough US politicians with enough pull in the justice system to get away with it until now?

      • Well, Google did just release their first folding phone that is tablet-like. So they have a financial interest in promoting this.

  • why can they not sort out a decent window manager for android ?

    you can run android apps on a chromebook but they look not grea... fully approve this message - just force tablet/4k phone/tablet/desktop view and be done with it...

    regards

    John Jones

    • why can they not sort out a decent window manager for android ?

      you can run android apps on a chromebook but they look not grea... fully approve this message - just force tablet/4k phone/tablet/desktop view and be done with it...

      regards

      John Jones

      Android has Tablets?

      • Bunches, most any non-consumer handheld you see. iOS tablets are for hospitals and consumers.

        • Bunches, most any non-consumer handheld you see. iOS tablets are for hospitals and consumers.

          . . .And Pilots and Factory Managers and Construction Forepersons and Salespersons and Field Technicians and Data Collectors and Students And Artists and Musicians and Architects and Doctors and . . .

          • Yeah exactly. We'll still use iPads sometimes when durability isn't important, but usually in that case someone will want something more functional like a Surface so the iPads are for stuff with custom hardware where there are only mobile apps for whatever reason. The MDM software for iOS tends to be a bit more user friendly, though.

            • Yeah exactly. We'll still use iPads sometimes when durability isn't important, but usually in that case someone will want something more functional like a Surface so the iPads are for stuff with custom hardware where there are only mobile apps for whatever reason. The MDM software for iOS tends to be a bit more user friendly, though.

              Not sure what kind of environments you are speaking-of; but any tablet can be economically protected from a reasonably-hostile environment.

              But, if you are talking about throwaway Tablets, then I guess no-name Androids are good enough for some applications.

              • E.g. Lab environments where the equipment is subject to decontamination, you can't really wrap it in a third party case without giving contaminants extra places to hide so you have to do rugged devices.

                • E.g. Lab environments where the equipment is subject to decontamination, you can't really wrap it in a third party case without giving contaminants extra places to hide so you have to do rugged devices.

                  What non-encased Android Tablets are intrinsically more rugged than an iPad?

                  "Ruggedized" Tablets don't count; because those have cases with mire cracks and crevices than an Elephant's hide!

                  • The ruggedized ones I've seen are pretty suitable, although the ones designed for medical applications do tend to look odd with too many rubberized bits to hold up to hard decon. But the warehouse application stuff works well in a lab, the smaller models are even air/water tight and have tool-less user replaceable batteries that can be hot swapped. Having a dedicated barcode reader module instead of depending on the camera is a plus, too, since depending on the application you will need to disable the cam

                    • The ruggedized ones I've seen are pretty suitable, although the ones designed for medical applications do tend to look odd with too many rubberized bits to hold up to hard decon. But the warehouse application stuff works well in a lab, the smaller models are even air/water tight and have tool-less user replaceable batteries that can be hot swapped. Having a dedicated barcode reader module instead of depending on the camera is a plus, too, since depending on the application you will need to disable the cameras for security.

                      The world has sleds that have dedicated BT barcode readers. I worked with one for an iPhone when developing some barcode functions for an ERP package. They work much better than using any onboard camera.

                      I don't think iPads were designed to fit every single possible Application; no single product can be. There are bound to be other Tablets that are worse-performing Tablets, per se; but have attributes that suit some applications better than iPads.

                      Horses for courses.

  • Right in TFS it says

    [...] Google detailed the changes in a blog post: "Apps and games that adhere to our large screen app quality guidelines will now be ranked higher in search and Apps and Games Home [...]

    They are up-ranking, not down-ranking...

    It's like ranking TLS enabled web sites getting a higher rank than non-TLS enabled sites which retain their original ranking, it's just that TLS enabled sites get an *extra* modifier up.

    • Re:headline is not accurate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Acy James Stapp ( 1005 ) on Friday July 28, 2023 @10:13AM (#63721692)

      well my friend, search ranking IS a zero sum game, so when one thing is ranked up, everything else is ranked down.

      • well my friend, search ranking IS a zero sum game, so when one thing is ranked up, everything else is ranked down.

        Not everything else. Only the things above the original rank of the thing and below the up-ranked rank of the thing move down.

        abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
        Uprank m...
        abcdefghijklnopqrstymvwxyz

        Only nopqrsty got ranked down. Everything else retained the same rank.

  • A better solution would be to rank the apps based on the target installation device ... if my target is a phone, I don't really WANT a tablet-optimized app, I want something that's optimized for phone use. If my target is a tablet, great, tell me what works well there but don't downrank an app that doesn't have tablet optimization if it doesn't NEED that (I've got a tablet and plenty of phone apps work just fine on it with no optimizations whatsoever). And for heavens sake don't start downranking apps tha

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      What if you have multiple devices? Wouldn't you want to know that the app you get on your phone can be the same (optimized) app on your tablet?
    • This sort of thing is like vector vs bitmap, like when you open an old Windows app on a high resolution laptop and can't read a damn thing. It'll be good to convince everyone to use the scaling layout tools instead of absolute justification.

  • Nudging (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WDot ( 1286728 ) on Friday July 28, 2023 @10:26AM (#63721744)
    There will certainly be devs that complain about this, but given Google’s control of the Android store, this is a strategic decision they have the power to make. Google clearly wants Android tablets to be better supported, and so they are incentivizing devs to provide that support by adjusting the ranking algorithm. This is similar to how Microsoft requires Xbox games to have achievements. Perhaps you could make a perfectly fine game that does not “need” achievements, but if you want it to be an Xbox game, you have to play by their rules. Unlike Xbox, this is not a hard requirement. I suspect most devs, after grumbling for a bit, maybe decide that they would rather spend a sprint to make sure their UI looks good on tablets, even if they don’t *really* care, than give up their ranking.
  • It's not a question of program quality; it's a question of Google's initiatives.

  • When I look for an app, I consult reviews, not some bogus Google ranking.

  • For example, they know that social media is important, so they brought you Google+ and forced you to use it then abandoned it. They also know that content aggregation is important, so they made an RSS feed reader called Google Reader then abandoned it. They also know what's best in compression, so they came up with webp, which looks like hot garbage, but google knows best. They know that domains are important, so they sold off that division to someone else.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I've got a broken screen (from the battery swelling) on a Pixel 5 and have backed up most of my data but a few apps force Portrait mode and the data I need.

    And the developers mark the apps as unable to backup because ... dunno. They can restrict backups to encrypted which might be reasonable but, no, they want me to write a key on a piece of paper instead of having an encrypted backup. It's r/assholedesign worthy.

    Next try is a USB-C/HDMI hub which will probably work, but jeez! If I could rotate into land

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