What’s new in Google Play

Posted by Paul Feng, Vice President of Product Administration, Google Play

At Google Play, we’re enthusiastic about serving to individuals uncover experiences they’ll love whereas empowering builders such as you to carry your concepts to life and construct profitable companies.

At this 12 months’s Google I/O, we shared our newest developments for apps and video games, plus how we’re serving to you reinforce belief with safe, high-quality experiences, purchase and have interaction customers, and optimize your income. Watch our keynote video under, or hold studying for the most important updates from this 12 months’s occasion.

We all know that success seems to be completely different in each app class, which is why we’re addressing the particular challenges and alternatives of every vertical, from video games and media to leisure and retail.

Have interaction SDK: Increasing your app’s attain on and past the Play Retailer

Over the past 12 months, the Play Retailer has developed right into a content-focused vacation spot, highlighting your apps’ most fun options and updates. Now we’re introducing a brand-new floor as a developer preview to showcase your content material and allow cross-app continuation journeys.

Builders can use this floor to focus on crucial content material from customers’ put in apps and even launch customers right into a full-screen immersive expertise with customized suggestions and promotions. For customers who haven’t put in your app but, you too can use this area to advocate your app and showcase its most compelling content material.

To unlock these advantages, you may must combine with Have interaction SDK, a client-side integration that leverages on-device APIs and takes most builders a couple of week to finish. Categorical curiosity in becoming a member of our developer preview at the moment and be among the many first to characteristic your content material on the brand new on-device floor launching later this 12 months.

Google Play Video games on PC and Play Factors: Maximizing gamer engagement

For video games, we proceed to boost our instruments to empower you all through the sport lifecycle. Google Play Video games on PC not too long ago expanded to greater than 140 markets with a catalog of over 3,000 video games, serving to you attain avid gamers throughout a number of units. We’ve additionally simplified the combination course of with Play Video games Companies, which connects your avid gamers’ progress and achievements on Play. To additional increase gamer engagement, you’ll be able to leverage Play Factors to launch coupons, reductions, or unique in-game objects, whereas additionally benefiting from improved efficiency reporting inside Play Console.

To be taught extra about our broad suite of instruments for sport builders, take a look at the full recap from the Google for Video games Developer Summit.

High quality and safety are on the coronary heart of Google Play. This 12 months, we’ve made a number of updates designed to guard each your customers and your enterprise, together with SDK administration instruments, smoother launch processes, enhanced consumer safety, and proactive methods to safeguard consumer belief and enterprise integrity.

Google Play SDK Console: Constructing a safer Play Retailer with SDK house owners

In 2021, we launched Google Play SDK Console and invited among the most generally adopted SDKs to affix. Now, we’re opening SDK Console to all SDKs, so long as they’re distributed from a canonical Maven repository supply that we are able to confirm. This consists of open-source SDKs and smaller SDKs that weren’t beforehand supported.

By the console, SDK house owners can entry utilization statistics and instruments to assist them information app builders in adopting SDK variations that repair high quality points and adjust to Play insurance policies.

Just lately, we added the choice in Play Console for app builders to share crash or ANR information with SDK house owners, which in flip can provide steering to app builders on the right way to repair crashes or ANR errors in all affected apps in Android Studio and Play Console.

Enhanced app-release instruments: Stopping surprises and streamlining launches

Our new pre-review checks mix a number of current high quality checks into one UI, permitting you to identify widespread coverage and compatibility points earlier than your app goes reside. And if that you must make last-minute adjustments, now you can discard undesirable releases within the “Not but despatched for assessment” stage, decreasing the chance of constructing unintentional updates.

Play Integrity API updates: New protections towards unauthorized entry

The Play Integrity API helps stop assaults, abuse, and unauthorized entry by letting you test that your app is unmodified and put in by Google Play on a real Android system. In the present day, we’re launching three new options to assist additional defend towards safety threats:

• App entry danger, now in public beta, lets your app know if one other app could possibly be capturing the display, displaying overlays, or controlling the system. Since these options are essential for accessibility customers, we’ve designed it in order that real accessibility apps received’t set off the decision.
• You too can obtain a Play Shield verdict in your API response. This lets your app know if Play Shield is turned on and if it has discovered any identified malware on the system.
• Lastly, latest system exercise enables you to detect and reply to units that make a excessive quantity of requests, which could possibly be an indication of automated site visitors or an assault.

For extra details about defending your app, watch “Safeguarding customers on Android.”

Reaching the correct viewers is essential for the success of your app. That’s why we’re continually growing instruments that make it easier to goal your excellent customers, personalize your messaging, and create participating experiences that drive downloads and retention.

Customized retailer listings: Extra methods to achieve the correct viewers with the correct message

Your retailer itemizing is commonly your first probability to make impression and purchase new customers. You may already tailor your retailer itemizing in numerous methods, to optimize your conversions for various audiences.

Now, you too can create listings based mostly on what customers seek for. Tailoring your retailer listings by search key phrases won’t solely make its content material extra related, it will possibly additionally make it easier to goal customers actively in search of the advantages your app gives. Play Console will even offer you key phrase options for probably impactful retailer listings.

Discover ways to construct listings that concentrate on particular search key phrases in our new Play Academy course, and get a head begin on writing by producing instructed descriptions with Gemini fashions.

Retailer listings: Enhancements to allow cross-device discovery

We’re additionally making retailer listings extra related to customers who need to use your apps on a number of units.

• Your listings now show screenshots, rankings, and opinions particular to every kind issue to assist customers get a way of the app expertise they will anticipate.
• Plus, by including particulars particular to every system kind, your app might be found when customers search and filter for brand spanking new apps by system kind or discover our new web page devoted to “different units.”

Deep hyperlinks: Growing engagement with seamless web-to-app journeys

Deep hyperlinks are an effective way to extend engagement by driving customers on to a related web page inside your app, the place they will take a look at content material, e book a visit, or proceed their procuring expertise.

• Now we’re making it even simpler to handle your deep hyperlinks in Play Console with deep hyperlinks patching. Patching permits you to experiment or make fast adjustments to your deep-link setup with out the necessity to launch a brand new app model, and it doesn’t commit you to everlasting adjustments.
• As soon as the adjustments are made, you’ll be able to assessment them by previewing or downloading a take a look at model to your system. If all the things works as anticipated, simply push the patch reside and let Google Play ship the adjustments to your customers.

With over 2.5 billion customers throughout 190+ markets, Google Play provides you entry to an enormous world viewers. This 12 months, we targeted on bettering your means to entry prospects in these markets by making it simpler to make safe and seamless purchases.

Expanded cost choices: Extra methods for purchasers to pay on your content material

Our in depth cost methodology library, which incorporates conventional cost strategies like bank cards and over 300 native types of cost in additional than 65 markets, continues to develop.

• We enabled Pix in Brazil and enhanced assist for UPI in India to streamline subscription purchases, permitting you to supply lots of of tens of millions of consumers their most popular cost methodology in these markets.
• We’ve additionally prolonged the power for purchasers to make purchases for another person. Clients with a Google household arrange can now approve their youngster’s purchases on Android from any OS.
• Beginning in India, prospects can ask a buddy or member of the family outdoors their Google household group to buy an app or in-app product for them by sharing a cost hyperlink by their most popular textual content messaging service or e-mail.

Optimized pricing: Pricing your merchandise for native buying energy

Discovering the correct value on your merchandise is crucial to draw prospects and maximize income.

• Google Play now routinely updates value ranges to mirror foreign money fluctuations towards the US greenback, and also you’ll see a brand new Inbox notification in Play Console any time we advocate a value adjustment on your in-app merchandise.
• To offer you extra pricing flexibility, now you can value your merchandise on Google Play as excessive as 999.99 US {dollars} or native equal.

Improved buy experiences: Boosting your checkout efficiency

We’re making buy experiences extra seamless and handy by giving prospects extra steering and suppleness, and supplying you with the instruments to fine-tune these experiences.

• We added new badges to the Play Retailer comparable to “greatest promoting,” “trending,” and “well-liked” to assist information prospects’ purchases.
• With our all-new installment subscriptions characteristic, you’ll be able to supply prospects the choice to pay over time for long-term subscriptions, serving to enhance your signups and lifelong worth. Our early entry program confirmed a rise of 8% in whole subscription signal ups and 4% in consumer spend.

• We’re additionally introducing the brand new Play Billing Lab app, which makes it simpler to undertake and take a look at options that may make it easier to enhance the client expertise for one-time purchases and subscriptions. The Lab permits you to take a look at your integration with Play’s billing system, create take a look at configurations with out affecting actual customers, and experiment with nation overrides and subscription lifecycle adjustments.

To benefit from these options and all the things else that our commerce platform has to supply, be sure you improve to Play Billing Library 7.0 later this month. This 12 months, we’re aligning the library’s deprecation timelines with Play’s insurance policies, so assist for model 5 will finish in August 2024.

To be taught extra about what Google Play Commerce can do, take a look at our session on the right way to scale and optimize your enterprise.

And that’s it for our recap of the most recent updates and vertical-specific investments we’re making that will help you reinforce belief, purchase and have interaction customers, and optimize your income. We’re excited to see the way you leverage these instruments to develop your enterprise on Google Play.