Updated Google Play Description Guidelines

Over the last several months, Google Play has been making several changes to Google Play app promotion, the requirements for app listings and the approval process. Working with our clients on writing optimized descriptions, we discovered another restriction for the Google Play description:

Your app description should avoid excessive detail and references to your other apps or products.

For example, you should not list all of the details of content included in the app or its various components, as shown in the example below.

Also, the description should not include any references to other apps that you’ve published. - support.google.com

Breaking this restriction into two parts:

Do not attempt to keyword stuff your description by detailing all of the content

Do not reference other apps in your portfolio

The focus of the recent changes in Google Play seems to be combatting "keyword stuffing" in app descriptions.

The back and forth between aggressive mobile app publishers and Google continues.

First, Google Play description guidelines were updated to reject descriptions that referred to other apps. The idea being, if a publisher wanted to show up in Google Play search results for "Candy Crush" - the publisher would add:

If you liked Candy Crush - you will love this game!

Then publishers started "hiding" the references to other apps in reviews for the description:

"If you liked Candy Crush - you will love this game!" - Sally

Google was quick to address this and continues to find and restrict more of these types of hacky description writing. The approach at Gummicube has always been to write descriptions that position your app for maximum discovery in the app stores, without being spammy or turning potential users away. Take a look at how Gummicube can position your app portfolio for long term success or contact us at info@gummicube.com.