Posted by Dorothy Kelly, Head of Developer Insights, Google Play Developer Marketing

Core to our mission, we're always focused on the user and delivering the best experience possible. This same principle underlies how Google Play works with developers, as we aim to provide you with best experience working with us and our products. We can only do this through understanding what you need and how we can improve. We ran our first Developer Sentiment Survey in July this year, and heard feedback from over 4,000 developers across 15 countries. This bi-annual survey gathers feedback at scale from the thousands of developers around the world who publish their apps and games on Google Play. While it was great to hear how Google Play is working for you, we also learned how we should improve to enable you to build even more successful businesses.

This month, you may receive an email from Google Play inviting you to participate in the next Google Play Developer Sentiment Survey. This invitation is sent to a selection developers who have opted in to receive Research contacts in the Developer Console, or to those who are directly managed by Google. You can review and update your preferences in the Developer Console to ensure you get the opportunity to be invited to participate in future surveys.

In this survey we ask you to give us feedback across a number of areas:

• Develop: Testing, publishing and launching your app or game.
• Grow: Discovery and marketing of your app or game.
• Engage: Distributing to and engaging with your target market.
• Earn: Pricing and Payment methods.
• Getting Support: Accessing the information and support you need when you have a question.

We use your feedback to decide what we need to focus on next to help you grow your app or game business. Initiatives announced at I/O 2016, such as improved betas, prelaunch reporting, the Developer Console app, and pricing templates, were all developed in response to feedback from developers like you.

If you do receive an invitation to participate in this survey, we really appreciate you taking the time to complete it. We value your feedback and want to act on it to help you create apps and games that delight your users, and help you build a successful business anywhere in the world.

Posted by Kazushi Nagayama, Search Quality Analyst, and Andrew Ahn, Product Manager

We strive to continuously make Google Play the best platform for enjoying and discovering the most innovative and trusted apps. Today we are announcing additional enhancements to protect the integrity of the store.

Our teams work every day to improve the quality of our discovery systems. These content discovery systems ensure that users can find and download apps they will love. From time to time, we observe instances of developers attempting to manipulate the placement of their apps through illegitimate means like fraudulent installs, fake reviews, and incentivized ratings. These attempts not only violate the Google Play Developer Policy, but also harm our community of developers by hindering their chances of being discovered or recommended through our systems. Ultimately, they put the end users at risk of making wrong decisions based on inaccurate, unauthentic information.

Today we are rolling out improved detection and filtering systems to combat such manipulation attempts. If an install is conducted with the intention to manipulate an app's placement on Google Play, our systems will detect and filter it. Furthermore, developers who continue to exhibit such behaviors could have their apps taken down from Google Play.

In the vast majority of cases, no action will be needed. If you are asking someone else to promote your app (e.g., third-party marketing agency), we advise you to make sure that the promotion is based on legitimate practices. In case of questions, please check out the Developer Support Resources.

These important changes will help protect the integrity of Google Play, our developer community, and ultimately our end user. Thank you for your support in building the world's most trusted store for apps and games!

Guest post by Rajiev Timal, Founder of Readfeed

Readfeed was created to help book lovers around the world share and discuss their favorite reads with each other more easily. Today, we are excited to officially launch the Readfeed app on Google Play. As one of the first online book clubs available only on Android devices, Readfeed lets you create your virtual bookshelf by adding books to custom lists, track and share your reading progress with community members, and see what books others are reading and talking about.

Readfeed has come a long way since we first released the app as beta in Google Play's Early Access program. As one of the first graduates of the beta program, we were able to solicit feature requests, identify bugs, locate new and optimize existing target markets, as well as build a sizable reader community. This allowed Readfeed to deliver the best possible experience right out of the gate.

As a guest on this blog, we thought it would be helpful to share some important best practices that we learned from the Early Access program to improve your products and scale your user base.

Harnessing Feedback Loops

One of the core principles underlying the construction of any successful product is setting up an effective feedback loop between users and product creators. Google Play Early access does this automatically. Users show up (sometimes seemingly out of nowhere), install the app, and leave feedback in the Beta Feedback section of the developer console. We can then reply in that section or take the conversation into an email, address the issue, and email users when it's addressed. Many improvements to Readfeed have been made as a direct result of this process.

Identifying New Target Markets

One major benefit of Early Access was that it gave us immediate access to a worldwide audience of readers. We were able to quickly assess the different book-related markets that existed based on user feedback and interviews done through email. Since launched in beta, over 1000 people have asked to read free books. Apparently this need exists in third-world countries and we plan to add this functionality in a future release.

Identifying Bugs

Bugs plague any app in its early stages. Because of the variety of devices that Early Access users have, ranging from Android 4.2 rooted devices to the latest Nexus phones, we were able to identify bugs very quickly. For instance, on Android 4.2 there was a recurrent crash which was tough for me to identify with my own devices. After one user emailed me about it, I was able to gather enough information to resolve the issue and put out an update immediately.

Identifying New Features

Google Play Early Access made it a lot easier to determine what to do next. When about 10 people request a feature, we know it's immediately important and put it in the app. One feature that came directly from Early Access feedback was the ability to rate books without leaving a review.

Community Building

Early Access has allowed us to start building a community. For instance, a Software tester from the UK who likes books sent me a detailed analysis of all of Readfeed's bugs. Also, we've witnessed many people take the initiative and answer others' questions about the app. Because of the critical mass that Google Play Early Access helps you build, it's easy for communities to form and start sharing information with each other.

A/B Testing

We now have enough users to A/B test certain parts of the app and get statistically significant results. This is something that usually takes a long time to achieve.

There are many other ways Google Play Early Access have helped us, and we're thankful that Readfeed has had the opportunity to be a part of the program. I can say without reservation that our current and future product would be in a very different place had it not been for our inclusion in Early Access.