(upbeat music)
Hi, I’m Bert de Weerd and I'm a product manager in Google Play.
I'm excited to take you through this next part of the presentation
to talk about improving your Store listing quality.
When Google Play launched in 2008, it was easy for developers to get noticed
with only a few hundred apps and games live on Play Store.
Fast forward to today, there are now millions of apps and games available
to audiences in over 190 countries.
The unique assets you provide to the Store are essential to users
making a decision on what to download.
To ensure your Store listing assets
can help users to anticipate your in-game experience
and drive meaningful downloads,
we are reannouncing a policy change for app metadata
and introducing new guidelines on Store listing preview assets.
First I would like to talk about a pre-announcement
for the upcoming policy change for app metadata.
Since your app title, icon and developer name
are the most important discovery elements on the Store listing page,
we're preparing to launch a new set of policies
to keep these elements recognizable and unique.
The official policy will follow later in 2022.
User attention spans are limited.
Keep your app title concise and convey to users
what your game and brand is about.
Shorter titles also avoid the likelihood that a title will be truncated in the Store,
which can cause miscomprehension.
Your title, icon or developer name should not be used to promote deals
just to get users to install.
For users, the key to deciding to install is about the game itself.
Having promotional deals in your title and icon
will not necessarily get you to high-quality installs with long-term user loyalty.
To acquire and retain users, the key is to meet user interest and needs.
Language or graphic elements that tell users that the game is new or updated
or has fake notification badges doesn’t help he user to decide
if this is the game they want to play.
Special characters and capitalization are mostly a distraction to user comprehension.
Using emojis, multiple exclamation marks. or all caps
does not provide the user with any meaningful information.
This concludes a high-level update on our upcoming policy change for app metadata.
We hope that this preannouncement will give you ample time
before the official policy is announced.
Next, I would like to talk about new Play Store preview asset guidelines.
Google Play is increasingly showing more of your assets front and center,
servicing graphic assets and descriptions right on Games Home.
We recently launched a new content forward discovery experience on Games Home worldwide,
offering users a richer and more immersive browse experience
by showing metadata, screenshots and auto-playing videos.
In this new discovery experience, your unique assets are essential to users
for informed decision making.
To ensure that your Store listing assets can help users anticipate your in-game experience
and drive meaningful downloads for your game,
we've recently updated our guidelines for Store listing preview assets.
A preview video is an effective way to show the look and feel
and the gameplay experience of your game.
Your video should set the right expectations
and demonstrate the value uniqueness of your game.
For the best discovery experience, keep your video short and concise,
as only the first 30 seconds autoplay on the Play Store.
Limit title screens, logos, cutscenes or pre-rendered promotional content.
Show actual in-game footage as early as possible
within the first 10 seconds of the video, and aim for at least 80% of the video
to be representative of the in-game user experience.
When using pre-rendered footage, cutscenes and graphic assets,
it should be in support of conveying the actual in-game experience.
Google Play can show groups of games using preview videos.
Including a video on your Store listing is therefore strongly encouraged
to be eligible for recommendations using these formats.
Screenshots can be displayed throughout Google Play
and are critical to help users understand what your game is about.
Screenshots must demonstrate the actual in-game experience
and should focus on core features and content.
Google Play will increasingly recommend games using large-format fusing screenshots.
To be considered eligible for this, the recommended guideline
to provide at least three 16x9 landscape
or three 9x16 portrait screenshots is a requirement.
Your feature graphic can be displayed in various places throughout Google Play,
including video thumbnails, screenshot collections and ad formats.
Consider the layout of your feature graphic,
as some formats on the Play Store may apply additional UI overlays.
Keep prominent visuals and a focal point towards the center of the graphic
and avoid placing key elements in the cut-off zones.
The image should convey the Store user experience
and highlight the core value proposition, relevant context or storytelling elements.
Do not use prominent branding that is similar to your app icon and title
to avoid duplication.
Instead, we recommend you optimize for elements
that serve as an extension of your app, title and icon.
The short description: This is first text users see
when looking at your Store listing page on the Play Store.
But it will also increasingly appear in other locations
such as the upcoming rich list format,
of which you can see previewed here on the right.
To connect users with the right content, users should be able to quickly understand
unique value of your game.
We recommend to focus on actually conveying
the core experience in simple and concise language,
highlighting any aspects that make your game unique.
Key aspects that are meaningful to users include gameplay,
social features, IP, theme and setting, and online and offline connectivity.
In addition to specific requirements for each asset type,
there are general guidelines applicable to all Store listing preview assets.
Avoid including buzzwords and language unrelated to the function
or purpose of your game, including call to actions, keyword stuffing,
and performance ranking such as best, number one, top downloaded, etc.
Ensure your assets are properly localized, has correct use of spelling and grammar,
and is correctly formatted.
Avoid use of all caps and repeat use of special characters for emphasis,
and do not use emojis and emoticons.
Ensure the legibility of all your assets for mobile phone factors.
Use readable fonts and proper font size
and avoid overloading a graphic with too much content.
And at last, all assets must always provide an accurate representation
of your game and the in-game experience.
Do not mislead users, and focus on conveying meaningful information.
To ensure your games can be considered eligible
for recommendations on all surfaces on Google Play,
please review our new Store listing guidelines.
Assets that don't meet our guidelines
may be ineligible for promotion and recommendations
on major Google Play services such as Games Home.
We'll start using these guidelines
to inform our recommendations in the second half of 2021.
Please visit Play Developer Console or Play Console Help Center
and review the guidelines for more information or visit the link.
And start optimizing your Store listing for better game discovery experiences
for your potential users.
This concludes my presentation, and I hope you find this information helpful.
Thank you.
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