Google Play is the premier store for distributing Android apps. When you publish on Google Play, you put your apps in front of Android's huge base of active customers, in more than 190 countries and territories across the world.
Google Play is a central part of the Android experience. New users personalize their devices with apps, games, and other Google Play content. Existing users return regularly to see what's trending and new. Downloading new apps is extremely convenient and fast— Google Play pushes apps to the user's devices instantly, over the air.
Google Play is also a top destination for web users. Anyone with a browser can explore Google Play on the web. Android users can even buy and install the apps they want and Google Play pushes them automatically to their devices with no cables required.
The accessibility and convenience of the Google Play web site give you new ways to drive traffic to your products from many sources, such as online ads, web search and cross-linking. Google Play is designed to connect users with great apps and games. It provides key channels to get your app noticed and gain traction in the marketplace.
User Ratings and Reviews
Prospective users look at ratings and reviews as key benchmarks of app quality. By rating apps from one to five stars and posting reviews, Android users show their appreciation for the apps they have downloaded.
Your app's rating is one of the most important factors influencing its ranking in the Google Play lists and search results. It's also one of the key metrics that the editorial staff looks for when curating apps and games for promotion in the store.
Category Browsing
When you publish an app in Google Play, you pick the category where you want users to find your app. More than 30 categories are available. Inside each category, apps are ranked based on a combination of ratings, reviews, downloads, country, and other factors.
Search
Search on Google Play lets users pinpoint an app or game quickly. Search uses powerful heuristics to suggest terms as the user types, and it offers direct links to apps as suggestions. In results, users find the most relevant, most popular apps at the top.
Top Charts and Lists
Top charts keep users in touch with what’s popular and trending with Android users, right from the Apps and Games home pages. The charts stay fresh, updating several times each day based on recent download activity. As an app's ratings and download activity grow, it can move up in the charts.
To make the charts as relevant as possible for users across the world, they are also country-specific in Google Play's most popular countries. As your apps get traction and build momentum in downloads and ratings, they’ll climb one or more of the top charts and gain even more exposure.
| Top Free | Free apps and free games lists |
| Top Paid | Paid apps and paid games lists |
| Top Grossing | Gross proceeds, free or paid |
| Top New Free | Less than 30 days old |
| Top New Paid | Less than 30 days old |
| Trending | New arrivals growing quickly in installs |
Featured, Staff Picks, Collections, and Badges
The Google Play editorial team is dedicated to bringing the best apps to the attention of users and setting the tone for app quality throughout the store. It constantly reviews apps from across Google Play to find not only the best-known apps and games, but also the "diamonds in the rough" that they want more people to see. The team promotes great apps in the Featured, Staff Picks, and other collections.
You can't nominate your app for featuring, but the team is always monitoring Google Play for great apps. If you build an app that users love and that looks great on Android devices, the editorial team will notice.
Featured and Staff Picks
Each week the Google Play editorial staff selects a new set of apps to promote in its popular Featured and Staff Picks collections.
The Featured collections highlight the latest and greatest app and game titles available for Android. The list also includes the best and most popular apps in the top categories are also featured. Staff Picks collects all recently featured apps and games on Google Play. To focus on tablet users, A special Staff Picks collection highlights the best apps for Android tablets.
Featured |
Collection |
Editors' Choice |
App collections
From time to time the editorial staff puts together a collection of apps and games based on a theme or seasonal event. Users frequently use these lists to select apps, attracted by the timeliness of the collection.
The editorial staff chooses apps for collection promotions — high-quality apps that show the best of Android on phones and tablets. The staff also looks for apps that can make an interesting or unique contribution to the collection as a whole.
Editors' Choice
Editors’ Choice is a curated collection of apps that highlights some of the very best apps available on Android. Editors choose these apps for quality and great user interface, long-term popularity and innovative use of Android features.
Apps chosen for Editors’ Choice also receive a badge that is displayed wherever the app name is seen in Google Play.
Top Developer
Top Developer is a badge recognizing established, respected developers for their commitment to launching high-quality and innovative apps on Android. The Google Play editorial staff awards a Top Developer badge from time-to-time based on the cumulative work of the developer.
The Top Developer badge appears next to the developer name wherever it is displayed in Google Play. The badge means long-term recognition of all of the developer’s apps. It signifies an additional level of trust and confidence users have in a developer’s products.
Store Listing Pages
Your app’s Google Play storefront is its store listing page: a rich and colorful page that lets you promote your app, highlight its ratings and reviews, and show what your app can do.
Your store listing is where your users come to find out everything about your app. When they see your app listed in search results, top charts, category listings, and collections, one tap takes them directly to your store listing.
Manage your product details page through the Google Play Developer Console from any web browser. Sign in to upload or update your brand assets, and enter your product details in the languages of your markets.
When you publish, Google Play adds your app’s ratings, reviews, links to your other products, and more. It also makes sure your store listing page looks great on phones, tablets, and in a web browser.
You can link web users directly to your product details page from outside Google Play, such as from your web site, an ad campaign, reviews, social media posts, and more. See Linking to Your Products to find out how.