Google Play Store ratings and reviews will soon be more relevant to you
Reviews are useful because they let us know about a product or service and how it fares before we actually put money down, but sometimes some reviews might not be as helpful or useful depending on where you are. This is because where you live and your culture might have a role to play when it comes to reviewing certain products or services.
This is something that Google is recognizing and as a result, they will be making some changes to how the Play Store’s reviews are viewed. Starting in November, they will be implementing some changes that will make reviews more localized and relevant to you, to try and give users the best and most contextual reviews they can possibly get.
According to Google:
- From November 2021, users on phones will start to see ratings specific to their registered country
- Early in 2022 users on other form-factors such as tablets, Chromebooks, and wearables will start to see ratings specific to the device that they’re on
As Google notes in their blog, these changes are important because in an example they gave, a bad review of an app due to a bug that might affect users in one region might not be fair if other users aren’t experiencing it. Also, negative reviews about a tablet app might not apply to the smartphone version of the app, and so so, so these distinctions are important.
Source: Google