Android Developer Story: Peak Games generates majority of global revenue for popular game ‘Spades’ on Android

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

Founded in 2010, Turkish mobile games developer Peak Games started developing games targeted to the local market and is now scaling globally. Their game ‘Spades Plus’ is growing in the US and the game generates over 70% of its mobile revenue from Android.

Watch Erdem İnan, Business Intelligence and Marketing Director, and İlkin Ulaş Balkanay, Head of Android Development, explain how Peak Games improved user engagement and increased installs with Google Play Store Listing experiments and app promotion right from within the Developer Console.

Find out more about how to use run tests on your Store Listing to increase your installs and how to promote your app or game with Universal App Campaigns from the Google Play Developer Console.

Android Developer Story: Zabob Studio and Buff Studio reach global users with Google Play

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

South Korean Games developers Zabob Studio and Buff Studio are start-ups seeking to become major players in the global mobile games industry.

Zabob Studio was set up by Kwon Dae-hyeon and his wife in 2013. This couple-run business has already published ten games, including hits ‘Zombie Judgement Day’ and ‘Infinity Dungeon.’ So far, the company has generated more than KRW ₩140M (approximately $125,000 USD) in sales revenue, with about 60 percent of the studio’s downloads coming from international markets, such as Taiwan and Brazil.

Elsewhere, Buff Studio was founded in 2014 and right from the start, its first game Buff Knight was an instant hit. It was even featured as the ‘Game of the Week’ on Google Play and was included in “30 Best Games of 2014” lists. A sequel is already in the works showing the potential of the franchise.

In this video, Kwon Dae-hyeon, CEO of Zabob Studio, and Kim Do-Hyeong, CEO of Buff Studio, talk about how Google Play services and the Google Play Developer Console have helped them maintain a competitive edge, market their games efficiently to global users and grow revenue on the platform.

Android Developer Story: Buff Studio - Reaching global users with Google Play

Android Developer Story: Zabob Studio - Growing revenue with Google Play

Check Zabob Studio apps and Buff Knight on Google Play!

We’re pleased to share that Android Developer Stories will now come with translated subtitles on YouTube in popular languages around the world. Find out how to turn on YouTube captions. To read locally translated blog posts, visit the Google developer blog in Korean.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Empowering successful global businesses on Google Play

Posted by Ellie Powers, Product Manager, Google Play

With more than 50 billion app installs over the past year from users across 190 countries, Google Play continues to see incredible growth thanks to developers like you creating amazing experiences. Play is now reaching more than one billion users every month.

In February, we announced that we had paid out more than $7 billion to developers in the prior year alone. This week at Google I/O, we’re introducing new and powerful tools to help you further grow your business, improve decision making based on smarter insights, and better engage your user base with more relevant content.

Acquire users from the Developer Console

Once you’ve built a great app, the next important step is to proactively find ways to promote it and grow a loyal user base. App install ads are one powerful way to do that. In the coming months, you’ll be able to quickly and easily set up ad campaigns right from within the Google Play Developer Console for the first time.

All you need to do is set a total budget and the cost you're willing to pay per user and we’ll scale your app promotion across our networks, including Google Search, AdMob, YouTube and the search ads we’re piloting on Google Play. With this new feature, you will will be able to better find the customers that are most likely to install your app.

Actionable insights with the Acquisition and Conversion Funnel

Whether you pay to acquire users or not, you want to know where they’re coming from. Through the Developer Console, you will soon be able to get a snapshot of how many users visit your Store listing, install your app, and make purchases. You’ll see where your most valuable users come from — across organic and paid traffic — and better understand where to focus your efforts.

Optimize your Play store listing with experiments

Your Play Store listing is extremely important, as it’s often the first touch point users have with your app. Starting today, we’re making it easier to optimize this page with support for A/B tests. You can run experiments with different versions of text and graphics to see which are most effective in converting visits into installs on Google Play. In our pilot program, we were thrilled to see that some developers like Kongregate achieved double-digit improvements in their install rates so far.

Test your app automatically on real devices with Cloud Test Lab

With the large variety of Android form factors in the market, testing your app on real devices is a critical step to ensuring a positive user experience on any device. However, you may not have access to every device that your users do. So we’re integrating the newly announced Cloud Test Lab into the Developer Console, which will allow you to automatically test your apps on hundreds of popular physical Android devices for free. We’re going to be rolling out this pilot program gradually, so we’ll welcome your feedback on it.

For each APK you upload to an alpha or beta channel, Google Play will execute fully automated testing of your app against physical devices matching your app targeting criteria and output a report with a detailed analysis of issues, including screenshots and logs. Google Cloud Test Lab will roll out to all developers later this year; you can sign-up to become a tester in the Developer Console now.

Build a data-driven games business with Player Analytics

Google Play Games has activated more than 180M new users in the past six months and continues to be the fastest growing mobile gaming platform in history.

Over the coming months, we're adding new reports, player segments, game metrics, and event types to Player Analytics to help you manage your games business. We're also bringing enhancements to our live operations tools that will enable dynamic content updates that make games feel more alive and engaging, gameplay to respond to changing player needs, and more fun, personalized user experiences. As the bar for success in mobile gaming continues to rise, we’re continuing to evolve our tools to help you meet the soaring expectations of players.

Find great apps – developer pages and search results

There are several ways in which we are improving the discoverability of great apps and games on Google Play to help drive more engagement. Starting today, you can create a unique homepage on Google Play to promote your entire app catalog. With your own developer page, you are able to upload graphics, explain what your company is all about and pick a special app to feature. This gives you a single destination to promote all of your apps on Google Play.

We are also helping guide users with broad interests (e.g. “shopping”) in a new search results experience.

The focus is on organizing results in an intuitive way that allows users to narrow their intent -- such as grouping shopping apps into coupons apps and fashion apps. By doing so, users will be able to better see the range of apps that satisfy their needs, while also increasing the chances of discovering new and innovative apps that you’re building.

Family-friendly content in Google Play

Starting today, we’re making it easier to find family-friendly content on Google Play through new discovery features. On the Apps & Games and Movies & TV homepages, users can now hit the “Family” star to see a curated set of options for specific age groups. In Play Books, tap the “Children’s Books” star. These pages let you browse by age ranges to find content that’s the best fit for the family. If you’ve already opted-in your apps to the Designed for Families program and they’ve met the requirements, they’ll be included in the new family section so that parents can find suitable, trusted, high-quality apps and games more easily. Find out more about opting-in to the Designed for Families program.

Join us at Google I/O 2015

To learn more, tune-in live to “Developers connecting the world through Google Play” at 1pm PT / 4pm ET / 9pm GMT on May 29 on google.com/io.

If you’re at I/O 2015, come along to our breakout sessions where we’ll be talking about and demo’ing these new features. Find our sessions in the I/O 2015 schedule.

Check out developer.android.com/distribute over the coming weeks and months as we add I/O videos and more details about these and other new features.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Integrate Play data into your workflow with data exports

Posted by Frederic Mayot, Google Play team

The Google Play Developer Console makes a wealth of data available to you so you have the insight needed to successfully publish, grow, and monetize your apps and games. We appreciate that some developers want to access and analyze their data beyond the visualization offered today in the Developer Console, which is why we’ve made financial information, crash data, and user reviews available for export. We're now also making all the statistics on your apps and games (installs, ratings, GCM usage, etc.) accessible via Google Cloud Storage.

New Reports section in the Google Play Developer Console

We’ve added a Reports tab to the Developer Console so that you can view and access all available data exports in one place.

A reliable way to access Google Play data

This is the easiest and most reliable way to download your Google Play Developer Console statistics. You can access all of your reports, including install statistics, reviews, crashes, and revenue.

Programmatic access to Google Play data

This new Google Cloud Storage access will open up a wealth of possibilities. For instance, you can now programmatically:

• import install and revenue data into your in-house dashboard
• run custom analysis
• import crashes and ANRs into your bug tracker
• import reviews into your CRM to monitor feedback and reply to your users

Your data is available in a Google Cloud Storage bucket, which is most easily accessed using gsutil. To get started, follow these three simple steps to access your reports:

1. Install the gsutil tool.
• Authenticate to your account using your Google Play Developer Console credentials.
2. Find your reporting bucket ID on the new Reports section.
• Your bucket ID begins with: pubsite_prod_rev (example:pubsite_prod_rev_1234567890)
3. Use the gsutil ls command to list directories/reports and gsutil cp to copy the reports. Your reports are organized in directories by package name, as well as year and month of their creation.

Read more about exporting report data in the Google Play Developer Help Center.

Note about data ownership on Google Play and Cloud Platform: Your Google Play developer account is gaining access to a dedicated, read-only Google Cloud Storage bucket owned by Google Play. If you’re a Google Cloud Storage customer, the rest of your data is unaffected and not connected to your Google Play developer account. Google Cloud Storage customers can find out more about their data storage on the terms of service page.

Helping developers connect with families on Google Play

Posted by Eunice Kim, Product Manager, Google Play

There are thousands of Android developers creating experiences for families and children — apps and games that broaden the mind and inspire creativity. These developers, like PBS Kids, Tynker and Crayola, carefully tailor their apps to provide high quality, age appropriate content; from optimizing user interface design for children to building interactive features that both educate and entertain.

Google Play is committed to the success of this emerging developer community, so today we’re introducing a new program called Designed for Families, which allows developers to designate their apps and games as family-friendly. Participating apps will be eligible for upcoming family-focused experiences on Google Play that will help parents discover great, age-appropriate content and make more informed choices.

Starting now, developers can opt in their app or game through the Google Play Developer Console. From there, our team will review the submission to verify that it meets the Designed for Families program requirements. In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding new ways to promote family content to users on Google Play — we’ll have more to share on this soon.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Power Great Gaming with New Analytics from Play Games

By Ben Frenkel, Google Play Games team

A few weeks ago at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), we announced Play Games Player Analytics, a new set of free reports to help you manage your games business and understand in-game player behavior. Today, we’re excited to make these new tools available to you in the Google Play Developer Console.

Analytics is a key component of running a game as a service, which is increasingly becoming a necessity for running a successful mobile gaming business. When you take a closer look at large developers that do this successfully, you find that they do three things really well:

• Manage their business to revenue targets
• Identify hot spots in their business metrics so they can continuously focus on the game updates that will drive the most impact
• Use analytics to understand how players are progressing, spending, and churning

“With player engagement and revenue data living under one roof, developers get a level of data quality that is simply not available to smaller teams without dedicated staff. As the tools evolve, I think Google Play Games Player Analytics will finally allow indie devs to confidently make data-driven changes that actually improve revenue.”

Kevin Pazirandeh
Developer of Zombie Highway 2

With Player Analytics, we wanted to make these capabilities available to the entire developer ecosystem on Google Play in a frictionless, easy-to-use way, freeing up your precious time to create great gaming experiences. Small studios, including the makers of Zombie Highway 2 and Bombsquad, have already started to see the benefits and impact of Player Analytics on their business.

Further, if you integrate with Google Play game services, you get this set of analytics with no incremental effort. But, for a little extra work, you can also unlock another set of high impact reports by integrating Google Play game services Events, starting with the Sources and Sinks report, a report to help you balance your in-game economy.

If you already have a game integrated with Google Play game services, go check out the new reports in the Google Play Developer Console today. For everyone else, enabling Player Analytics is as simple as adding a handful of lines of code to your game to integrate Google Play game services.

Manage your business to revenue targets

Set your spend target in Player Analytics by choosing a daily goal

To help assess the health of your games business, Player Analytics enables you to select a daily in-app purchase revenue target and then assess how you're doing against that goal through the Target vs Actual report depicted below. Learn more.

Identify hot spots using benchmarks with the Business Drivers report

Ever wonder how your game’s performance stacks up against other games? Player Analytics tells you exactly how well you are doing compared to similar games in your category.

Metrics highlighted in red are below the benchmark. Arrows indicate whether a metric is trending up or down, and any cell with the icon can be clicked to see more details about the underlying drivers of the change. Learn more.

Track player retention by new user cohort

In the Retention report, you can see the percentage of players that continued to play your game on the following seven days after installing your game.

Learn more.

See where players are spending their time, struggling, and churning with the Player Progression report

Measured by the number of achievements players have earned, the Player Progression funnel helps you identify where your players are struggling and churning to help you refine your game and, ultimately, improve retention. Add more achievements to make progression tracking more precise.

Learn more.

Manage your in-game economy with the Sources and Sinks report

The Sources and Sinks report helps you balance your in-game economy by showing the relationship between how quickly players are earning or buying and using resources.

For example, Eric Froemling, one man developer of BombSquad, used the Sources & Sinks report to help balance the rate at which players earned and spent tickets.

Read more about Eric’s experience with Player Analytics in his recent blog post.

To enable the Sources and Sinks report you will need to create and integrate Play game services Events that track sources of premium currency (e.g., gold coins earned), and sinks of premium currency (e.g., gold coins spent to buy in-app items).

Take your apps on the road with Android Auto

Posted by Wayne Piekarski, Developer Advocate

Starting today, anyone can take their apps for a drive with Android Auto using Android 5.0+ devices, connected to compatible cars and aftermarket head units. Android Auto lets you easily extend your apps to the car in an efficient way for drivers, allowing them to stay connected while still keeping their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. When users connect their phone to a compatible vehicle, they will see an Android experience optimized for the head unit display that seamlessly integrates voice input, touch screen controls, and steering wheel buttons. Moreover, Android Auto provides consistent UX guidelines to ensure that developers are able to create great experiences across many diverse manufacturers and vehicle models, with a single application available on Google Play.

With the availability of the Pioneer AVIC-8100NEX, AVIC-7100NEX, and AVH-4100NEX aftermarket systems in the US, the AVIC-F77DAB, AVIC-F70DAB, AVH-X8700BT in the UK, and in Australia the AVIC-F70DAB, AVH-X8750BT, it is now possible to add Android Auto to many cars already on the road. As a developer, you now have a way to test your apps in a realistic environment. These are just the first Android Auto devices to launch, and vehicles from major auto manufacturers with integrated Android Auto support are coming soon.

With the increasing adoption of Android Auto by manufacturers, your users are going to be expecting more support of their apps in the car, so now is a good time to get started with development. If you are new to Android Auto, check out our DevByte video, which explains more about how this works, along with some live demos.

The SDK for Android Auto was made available to developers a few months ago, and now Google Play is ready to accept your application updates. Your existing apps can take advantage of all these cool new Android Auto features with just a few small changes. You’ll need to add Android Auto support to your application, and then agree to the Android Auto terms in the Pricing & Distribution category in the Google Play Developer Console. Once the application is approved, it will be made available as an update to your users, and shown in the cars’ display.

Adding support for Android Auto is easy. We have created an extensive set of documentation to help you add support for messaging (sample), and audio playback (sample). There are also short introduction DevByte videos for messaging and audio as well. Stay tuned for a series of posts coming up soon discussing more details of these APIs and how to work with them. We also have simulators to help you test your applications right at your desk during development.

With the launch of Android Auto, a new set of possibilities are available for you to make even more amazing experiences for your users, providing them the right information for the road ahead. Come join the discussion about Android Auto on Google+ at http://g.co/androidautodev where you can share ideas and ask questions with other developers.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Creating Better User Experiences on Google Play

Posted by Eunice Kim, Product Manager for Google Play

Whether it's a way to track workouts, chart the nighttime stars, or build a new reality and battle for world domination, Google Play gives developers a platform to create engaging apps and games and build successful businesses. Key to that mission is offering users a positive experience while searching for apps and games on Google Play. Today we have two updates to improve the experience for both developers and users.

A global content rating system based on industry standards

Today we’re introducing a new age-based rating system for apps and games on Google Play. We know that people in different countries have different ideas about what content is appropriate for kids, teens and adults, so today’s announcement will help developers better label their apps for the right audience. Consistent with industry best practices, this change will give developers an easy way to communicate familiar and locally relevant content ratings to their users and help improve app discovery and engagement by letting people choose content that is right for them.

Starting now, developers can complete a content rating questionnaire for each of their apps and games to receive objective content ratings. Google Play’s new rating system includes official ratings from the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) and its participating bodies, including the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), Pan-European Game Information (PEGI), Australian Classification Board, Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) and Classificação Indicativa (ClassInd). Territories not covered by a specific ratings authority will display an age-based, generic rating. The process is quick, automated and free to developers. In the coming weeks, consumers worldwide will begin to see these new ratings in their local markets.

To help maintain your apps’ availability on Google Play, sign in to the Developer Console and complete the new rating questionnaire for each of your apps. Apps without a completed rating questionnaire will be marked as “Unrated” and may be blocked in certain territories or for specific users. Starting in May, all new apps and updates to existing apps will require a completed questionnaire before they can be published on Google Play.

An app review process that better protects users

Several months ago, we began reviewing apps before they are published on Google Play to better protect the community and improve the app catalog. This new process involves a team of experts who are responsible for identifying violations of our developer policies earlier in the app lifecycle. We value the rapid innovation and iteration that is unique to Google Play, and will continue to help developers get their products to market within a matter of hours after submission, rather than days or weeks. In fact, there has been no noticeable change for developers during the rollout.

To assist in this effort and provide more transparency to developers, we’ve also rolled out improvements to the way we handle publishing status. Developers now have more insight into why apps are rejected or suspended, and they can easily fix and resubmit their apps for minor policy violations.

Over the past year, we’ve paid more than $7 billion to developers and are excited to see the ecosystem grow and innovate. We’ll continue to build tools and services that foster this growth and help the developer community build successful businesses.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

How Google Analytics helps you make better decisions for your apps

Posted by Russell Ketchum, Lead Product Manager, Google Analytics for Mobile Apps

Knowing how your customers use your app is the foundation to keeping them happy and engaged. It’s important to track downloads and user ratings, but the key to building a successful business is using data to dive deeper into understanding the full acquisition funnel and what makes users stick around.

Google Analytics is the easiest way to understand more about what your users are doing inside your app on Google Play, while also simultaneously tracking your users across the web and other mobile platforms. To show how Google Analytics can help, we've created a new "Analyze" section on the Android Developers website for you to check out. We provide guidance on how to design a measurement plan and implement effective in-app analytics – and take advantage of features only available between Google Play and Google Analytics.

The Google Play Referral Flow in Analytics

Google Analytics for mobile apps provides a comprehensive view into your app’s full user lifecycle, including user acquisition, composition, in app behavior, and key conversions. Our Analytics Academy course on mobile app analytics is also a great resource to learn the fundamentals.

Eltsoft LLC, a foreign language learning and education app developer for Android, recognized early on how impactful Google Analytics would have on the company's ability to quickly improve on its apps and meet user needs.

Analytics has really helped us to track the effectiveness of the changes to our app. I would say six months ago, that our success was a mystery. The data said we were doing well, but the whys were not clear. Therefore, we couldn’t replicate or push forward. But today, we understand what’s happening and can project our future success. We have not only the data, but can control certain variables allowing us to understand that data. - Jason Byrne, Eltsoft LLC

Here are some powerful tips to make the most of Google Analytics:

1. Understand the full acquisition funnel
Uniquely integrated with the Google Play Developer Console, Google Analytics gives you a comprehensive view of the Google Play Referral Flow. By linking Analytics to the Developer Console, you can track useful data on how users move through the acquisition flow from your marketing efforts to the Google Play store listing to the action of launching the app. If you find that a significant number of users browse your app in Google Play, but don’t install it, for example, you can then focus your efforts on improving your store listing.
2. Unlock powerful insights on in-app purchases
Monitoring in-app purchases in the Google Play Developer Console will show you the total revenue your app is generating, but it does not give you the full picture about your paying users. By instrumenting your app with the Google Analytics ecommerce tracking, you’ll get a fuller understanding of what paying users do inside your app. For example, you can find out which acquisition channels deliver users who stay engaged and go on to become the highest value users.
3. Identify roadblocks and common paths with the Behavior Flow
Understanding how users move through your app is best done with in-app analytics. With Google Analytics, you can easily spot if a significant percentage of users leave your app during a specific section. For example, if you see significant drop off on a certain level of your game, you may want to make that level easier, so that more users complete the level and progress through the game. Similarly, if you find users who complete a tutorial stay engaged with your app, you might put the tutorial front and center for first-time users.
4. Segment your audience to find valuable insights
Aggregated data can help you answer questions about overall trends in your app. If you want to unlock deeper insights about what drives your users’ behavior, you can slice and dice your data using segmentation, such as demographics, behavior, or install date. If something changes in one of your key metrics, segmentation can help you get to the root of the issue -- for example, was a recent app update unpopular with users from one geographic area, or were users with a certain device or carrier affected by a bug?
5. Use custom data to measure what matters for your business
Simply activating the Google Analytics library gives you many out-of-the-box metrics without additional work, such as daily and monthly active users, session duration, breakdowns by country, and many more variables. However, it’s likely that your app has many user actions or data types that are unique to it, which are critical to building an engaged user base. Google Analytics provides events, custom dimensions, and custom metrics so you can craft a measurement strategy that fits your app and business.
6. No more one-size-fits-all ad strategy
If you’re a developer using AdMob to monetize your app, you can now see all of your Analytics data in the AdMob dashboard. Running a successful app business is all about reaching the right user with the right ad or product at the right time. If you create specific user segments in Google Analytics, you can target each segment with different ad products. For example, try targeting past purchasers with in-app purchase ads, while monetizing users who don’t purchase through targeted advertising.

By measuring your app performance on a granular level, you will be able to make better decisions for your business. Successful developers build their measurement plan at the same time as building their app in order to set goals and track progress against key success metrics, but it’s never too late to start.

Choose the implementation that works best for your app to get started with Google Analytics today and find out more about what you can do in the new “Analyze” section of developers.android.com.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Grow with Google Play: Scaled Publishing and New App Insights

By Kobi Glick, Google Play team

If you're growing your business on Google Play, the Google Play Developer Console is one of the most important tools at your disposal. At Google I/O, we introduced a number of new changes that give you valuable insight into how your app is performing. Here's an overview of some of the improvements you can now take advantage of.

Publishing API for scaling your app operations

Today we're happy to announce that the Google Play Developer Publishing API is now available to all developers. The API will let you upload APKs to Beta testing, Staged rollout and Production, and integrate publishing operations with your release processes and toolchain. The Publishing API also makes it easier for you to manage your in-app products catalog, provide tablet-specific screenshots, and localize your store listing text and graphics. The Publishing API will help you focus on your core business, with less time managing your releases, even as your business grows to more apps and markets.

Actionable insights at the right time

Email notifications for alerts

Recently, we added Alerts in the Developer Console to let you know when there are sudden changes in important stats like app installs, ratings, and crashes. You can now turn on email notifications for Alerts so that, even while you’re not in the Developer Console, you’ll be informed of relevant events before they can have a broader effect on your app. You can turn on email notifications for one or more of your apps under Email Preferences in the Developer Console settings.

New Optimization Tips

You’ll now see new Optimization Tips with instructions when we detect opportunities to improve your app. For example, we’ll let you know when updated versions of APIs you use are available — such as new Google Play in-app billing or Google Maps APIs. For games developers, we’ll also surface opportunities to use Google Play game services that can help improve users’ gaming experience and drive engagement. To see what tips we suggest for you, go to your app in the Developer Console and click on Optimization Tips.

Better data to inform your business decisions

Enhanced revenue statistics

To help you better understand your commercial success, we’ve enhanced revenue statistics in the Finance section of the Developer Console. We now let you see the average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) and give you more ways to analyse buyer data, such as comparing returning buyers (i.e., those who also made purchases in the past) to new buyers.

Bulk export of reviews

You can already engage with your users by reading and replying to reviews in the Developer Console and we’ve now added bulk export of reviews so you can download and analyze your app’s reviews en masse. This is particularly useful if you receive a large volume of reviews and want to perform your own sentiment analysis.

Improved stats for beta releases and staged rollouts

Since last year’s launch, you’ve used beta testing to release alpha and beta versions of your app, and staged rollout to gradually launch your app to production. To help you make the most of this feature, we’re now improving the way alpha, beta and staged rollout specific stats are displayed. When viewing your app and crash statistics you can now filter the app version by alpha, beta, or staged rollout to better understand the impact of your testing.

Improved reporting of native crashes

If you develop in native code, we’ve improved the reporting and presentation specifically for native crashes, with better grouping of similar crashes and summarizing of relevant information.

Deep-linking to help drive engagement

Finally, we’ve also added website verification in the Developer Console, to enable deep-linking to your app from search results. Deep-linking helps remind users about the apps they already have. It is available through search for all apps that implement app indexing. For example, if a user with the Walmart Android app searches for “Chromecast where to buy”, they’ll go directly to the Chromecast page in the Walmart app. The new App Indexing API is now open to all Android developers, globally. Get started now.

We hope you find these features useful and take advantage of them so that you can continue to grow your user base and improve your users’ experience. If you're interested in some other great tools for distributing your apps, check out this blog post, or any of the sessions which have now been posted to the Google Developers Channel.

Join the discussion on
+Android Developers

Google Play App Translation Service

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

Today we are happy to announce that the App Translation Service, previewed in May at Google I/O, is now available to all developers. Every day, more than 1.5 million new Android phones and tablets around the world are turned on for the first time. Each newly activated Android device is an opportunity for you as a developer to gain a new user, but frequently, that user speaks a different language from you.

To help developers reach users in other languages, we launched the App Translation Service, which allows developers to purchase professional app translations through the Google Play Developer Console. This is part of a toolbox of localization features you can (and should!) take advantage of as you distribute your app around the world through Google Play.

We were happy to see that many developers expressed interest in the App Translation Service pilot program, and it has been well received by those who have participated so far, with many repeat customers.

Here are several examples from developers who participated in the App Translation Service pilot program: the developers of Zombie Ragdoll used this tool to launch their new game simultaneously in 20 languages in August 2013. When they combined app translation with local marketing campaigns, they found that 80% of their installs came from non-English-language users. Dating app SayHi Chat expanded into 13 additional languages using the App Translation Service. They saw 120% install growth in localized markets and improved user reviews of the professionally translated UI. The developer of card game G4A Indian Rummy found that the App Translation Service was easier to use than their previous translation methods, and saw a 300% increase with user engagement in localized apps. You can read more about these developers’ experiences with the App Translation Service in Developer Stories: Localization in Google Play.

To use the App Translation Service, you’ll want to first read the localization checklist. You’ll need to get your APK ready for translation, and select the languages to target for translation. If you’re unsure about which languages to select, Google Play can help you identify opportunities. First, review the Statistics section in the Developer Console to see where your app has users already. Does your app have a lot of installs in a certain country where you haven’t localized to their language? Are apps like yours popular in a country where your app isn’t available yet? Next, go to the Optimization Tips section in the Developer Console to make sure your APK, store listing, and graphics are consistently translated.

You’ll find the App Translation Service in the Developer Console at the bottom of the APK section — you can start a new translation or manage an existing translation here. You’ll be able to upload your app’s file of string resources, select the languages you want to translate into, select a professional translation vendor, and place your order. Pro tip: you can put your store listing text into the file you upload to the App Translation Service. You’ll be able to communicate with your translator to be sure you get a great result, and download your translated string files. After you do some localization testing, you’ll be ready to publish your newly translated app update on Google Play — with localized store listing text and graphics. Be sure to check back to see the results on your user base, and track the results of marketing campaigns in your new languages using Google Analytics integration.

Good luck! Bonne chance ! ご幸運を祈ります! 행운을 빌어요 ¡Buena suerte! Удачи! Boa Sorte!

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Tablet changes in Google Play

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

Fueled by the Nexus 7 and other great devices, more than 70 million Android tablets have been activated. Thousands of developers have already designed their apps to look great on tablets, and with the holidays fast approaching, we’re making it even easier for the next wave of tablet owners to discover great apps and games.

Play Store tablet changes coming up on November 21

Last year, Google Play added a “designed for tablets” section, where users could easily discover apps that look great on their 7”- and 10”-tablets. This section includes only apps and games which meet criteria and guidelines we established last year. (Here’s an overview if you missed it.) Developers who invest the time to meet the criteria are seeing great results; take Remember The Milk, which saw an 83% increase in tablet downloads from being in this section. (see the whole story here).

On November 21 2013, the Play Store made a series of changes so it’s even easier for tablet users to find those apps that are best for their devices. First, by default, users browsing Google Play on a tablet will now see apps and games that are designed for tablets on the top lists (Top Paid, Top Free, Top Grossing, Top New Paid, Top New Free, and Trending). Tablet users will still be able to switch the view so they can see all apps or games if they choose. Also starting November 21, apps and games that do not meet the “designed for tablets” criteria will be marked as “designed for phones” for users who browse the Play Store on tablets.

You’ll want to make sure that your app is designed for tablets; read more about how to do this at the end of this blog post.

Make sure your app is ready!

If you want to be sure your app is included in the “Designed for tablets” view, go to the Developer Console to check your tablet optimization tips. If you see any issues listed there, you’ll need to address them in your app and upload a new binary for distribution. If there are no issues listed, your app is eligible to be included in the “Designed for tablets" view in the top lists.

Also, make sure to read the full tablet quality checklist to understand how to build outstanding tablet experiences.

Everyday, thousands of Android developers are taking advantage of the tremendous Android tablet opportunity. The flood of new users coupled with the increased screen size means new user experiences, more engagement and more monetization opportunities. We’re excited to see what you do!

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Improved App Insight by Linking Google Analytics with Google Play

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

A key part of growing your app’s installed base is knowing more about your users — how they discover your app, what devices they use, what they do when they use your app, and how often they return to it. Understanding your users is now made easier through a new integration between Google Analytics and the Google Play Developer Console.

Starting today, you can link your Google Analytics account with your Google Play Developer Console to get powerful new insights into your app’s user acquisition and engagement. In Google Analytics, you’ll get a new report highlighting which campaigns are driving the most views, installs, and new users in Google Play. In the Developer Console, you’ll get new app stats that let you easily see your app’s engagement based on Analytics data.

This combined data can help you take your app business to the next level, especially if you’re using multiple campaigns or monetizing through advertisements and in-app products that depend on high engagement. Linking Google Analytics to your Developer Console is straightforward — the sections below explain the new types of data you can get and how to get started.

In Google Analytics, see your app’s Google Play referral flow

Once you’ve linked your Analytics account to your Developer Console, you’ll see a new report in Google Analytics called Google Play Referral Flow. This report details each of your campaigns and the user traffic that they drive. For each campaign, you can see how many users viewed listing page in Google Play and how many went on to install your app and ultimately launch it on their mobile devices.

With this data you can track the effectiveness of a wide range of campaigns — such as blogs, news articles, and ad campaigns — and get insight into which marketing activities are most effective for your business. You can find the Google Play report by going to Google Analytics and clicking on Acquisitions > Google Play > Referral Flow.

In the Developer Console, see engagement data from Google Analytics

If you’re already using Google Analytics, you know how important it is to see how users are interacting with your app. How often do they launch it? How much do they do with it? What are they doing inside the app?

Once you link your Analytics account, you’ll be able to see your app’s engagement data from Google Analytics right in the Statistics page in your Developer Console. You’ll be able to select two new metrics from the drop-down menu at the top of the page:

• Active users: the number of users who have launched your app that day
• New users: the number of users who have launched your app for the first time that day

These engagement metrics are integrated with your other app statistics, so you can analyze them further across other dimensions, such as by country, language, device, Android version, app version, and carrier.

How to get started

To get started, you first need to integrate Google Analytics into your app. If you haven’t done this already, download the Google Analytics SDK for Android and then take a look at the developer documentation to learn how to add Analytics to your app. Once you’ve integrated Analytics into your app, upload the app to the Developer Console.

Next, you’ll need to link your Developer Console to Google Analytics. To do this, go to the Developer Console and select the app. At the bottom of the Statistics page, you’ll see directions about how to complete the linking. The process takes just a few moments.

That’s it! You can now see both the Google Play Referral Flow report in Google Analytics and the new engagement metrics in the Developer Console.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Google Play Developer 8-Step Checkup

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

Google Play gives you tons of options on publishing your apps and connecting with users. But as you get started with new features like beta testing and staged rollouts, it’s a good idea to do a checkup and make sure you’ve covered the basics.

1. Boost your developer account security

• If you take just one step today to protect your Google Play apps, enable two-step authentication for your Google account, and encourage the rest of your team to do the same.
• Next, many developers first set up their Google Play account with their personal gmail account, but it’s actually a good idea to transfer your apps to a separate account. All of your installations and reviews remain intact. If you haven’t done this already, transfer your apps to a new account today.
• Don’t share passwords. Instead, add each individual who needs access and only grant the minimum level of access they need — and encourage them to enable two-step authentication.
• Review the list of people with access regularly, and when people leave your project, make it a standard practice to remove their access. Learn more about developer account security.

2. Protect your keystore

In order to publish an update to an existing app, you’ll need to sign it with the same keystore every time. If you lose your keystore, you’ll lose your history and reviews, so you’ll need to start over with new apps with new package name and a new key, so you’ll want to make sure you protect it. First, choose a secure password, and don’t use the same password that you use for your Google account. Next, back up your keystore somewhere, but don’t upload it to Google Drive with an account you use to publish on Google Play.

3. Check your email addresses

As a developer, you are responsible for checking two important email addresses:

• Account owner email address: Google uses the address used to register your Developer Console to contact you about your apps and account, so it is extremely important that someone is responsible for checking it regularly. If necessary, you can forward messages from this account via Gmail, or transfer your apps to another account.
• Customer support email address: For each individual application, you can specify the best way for users to contact you for customer support. Ensure that a valid support email address for your product is specified. As a best practice, this should probably be a designated support account that is checked regularly and not the same email as the address used to login to the Developer Console.

4. Familiarize yourself with the policies

We recently launched some new guides and examples for Google Play’s Developer Program Policies and Developer Distribution Agreement. Note that once you publish an app as free, you can’t change it to a paid app later, though you can add in-app products.

5. Set up team processes

You may have many people involved with your Google Play apps. Make sure roles are clear in terms of whose job it is to publish updates, check statistics and optimization tips, read and reply to user reviews, and track revenue. Make sure all of these people have the right access to the Developer Console. Many developers who are part of larger organizations also report to their larger teams about their apps’ performance. Designate someone to make sure your app description, graphics (including localized and tablet screenshots), and pricing are up to date.

6. Configure your Developer Console UI languages

To change the language you want to see the Developer Console in, set your primary language. If you speak additional languages, configure those, too — user reviews in those languages won’t be translated automatically in the Developer Console. That was a popular request from developers.

7. Refresh your app’s marketing materials

• Optimize your Google Play image assets. Include a well designed feature graphic in your Google Play listing. Localize your feature graphic, screenshots and description to improve conversions globally. Create a great looking icon with the Launcher Icon Generator.
• Provide screenshots specifically for phones and tablets showing both portrait and landscape layouts.
• Improve your app’s marketing. Users are 47% more likely to trust & download content when you use the official Google Play Badge. Also, make sure you are linking to your apps properly. Use the Device Art Generator to create beautiful marketing material.

8. Stay on top of developer news

To make sure you’re aware of the latest Google Play updates for developers, make sure you check the Android Developers blog regularly, follow +Android Developers, and check the Developer Console regularly for announcements.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Watch Android @ Google I/O 2013

Posted by Reto Meier, Android Developer Relations Tech Lead

We had a lot to talk about this year at I/O. We launched Google Play services 3.1 with Google Play games services, improved Location APIs, and Google Cloud Messaging enhancements; Android Studio: A new IDE for Android development based on IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition; and Google Play Developer Console improvements such as app translation service, revenue graphs, beta testing & staged rollouts, and optimization tips.

With the excitement of these announcements behind us, it's time to sit back, relax, and watch all the sessions we missed during the event. To make that easier, we've collected all the Android sessions together in the Android @ Google I/O 13 page on the developer site.

We've also created the Google I/O 13 - The Android Sessions playlist (embedded below), as well as playlists for each developer category: design, develop, and distribute.

For those of you who prefer listening to your I/O talks without the distraction of watching speakers and slides, we're also making the sessions available as part of the Android Developers Live Podcast.

Google I/O is always a highlight on the Android Developer Relations team's calendar, so we'll be keeping the magic alive with our Android Developers Live broadcasts.

This week we resumed our regular broadcasts with Android Design in Action offering a review of Android Design sessions at I/O. Next week will see the return of This Week in Android Development and The App Clinic, and stay tuned for more episodes of Table Flip, GDG App Clinics, and more!

We'll also continue to add new DevBytes and BizDevBytes to offer tips and tricks for improving your apps and making them more successful.

As always you can talk to us and keep track of our upcoming broadcasts, Android Studio news, and other Android developer news on the +Android Developers Google+ page.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

New Ways to Optimize Your Business in Google Play

Posted by Ellie Powers, Google Play team

This week at I/O, we were excited to announce some updates to Google Play to help you optimize your business on Google Play: to help you take control of your app publishing, gain insight into your users, and expand your app’s success globally.

Play Store’s new view: apps designed for tablets

Many of you have invested in making great tablet experiences for your users, and we want to ensure that that work pays off and that users are able to discover great apps for their tablets. This week, the Google Play store began providing a view of our top charts highlighting apps which have been designed for tablets according to our tablet app quality checklist.

Be sure you don’t miss out! Check that your app’s optimization tips say that your app is designed for tablets, and upload tablet screenshots for 7” and 10” tablets.

Beta testing and staged rollouts

We have introduced support for beta testing and staged rollouts so that you can get feedback on your new app or app update early in its development and make sure your users are happy with the results. You can test two different versions on two different groups at the same time, such as testing a newer version with your employees first, and a more mature version with a group of external testers.

The beta testing is private on Google Play, and you can specify who gets these versions by adding Google Groups and Google+ Communities. Users give you feedback privately rather than through public reviews. When you’re satisfied that your new version is ready, you can now do a staged rollout to a percentage of your userbase. To give you more flexibility in light of beta testing and help get your whole team involved in the Developer Console, we will soon launch additional access controls.

Localization improvements

We’re collaborating with Google's internationalization team to make translating your app into new languages easier than ever. You can purchase professional translations of your apps from independent providers through the Google Play Developer Console. You can upload the strings you want translated, select the languages you want to translate into, and select your translation vendor based on time and price. If you’re interested in translating your apps with this feature, sign up to be a part of the preview in the Developer Console today on the APK page.

The new optimization tips for localization will help you identify new potential opportunities for global expansion based on popular languages for your app’s users and category. To fully localize your app into a language, you need to translate the strings in an APK, translate your Google Play store listing, and upload localized graphics. The optimization tips will also let you know if you’re missing any of these pieces.

New Analytics and monetization features

Getting better revenue and engagement data has been another key developer request, as developers told us that they check their revenue and stats constantly. New revenue charts in the Developer Console allow you to see your app’s daily revenue and summary figures, and you can filter the data by country. Coming soon, Google Play and Google Analytics are teaming up to bring you better insight into your users. Google Analytics will start showing Google Play views and installs for each campaign, while Google Play will show Google Analytics engagement metrics.

For those of you using in-app billing, we’ve heard your feedback and made some improvements to reduce your development time and costs. Your test accounts will now able to make in-app test purchases without those transactions actually being charged, but everything else works the same as it would for a real user.

In a few weeks, we will launch a new Order Status API, which allows you to verify the status of an in-app order from your servers. We will also be launching a tool for automating downloads of financial reports. Finally, the new Google Wallet Merchant Center is continuing to roll out with enhanced reporting, additional analytics and many other enhancements.

Google Play for Education coming soon

You'll soon be able to offer apps to schools through Google Play for Education, which launches later this year to K-12 schools in the United States. This online destination will allow schools to discover, purchase, and distribute apps to their students. Visit developer.android.com/edu to get started creating or optimizing your apps for schools today.

Join the discussion on

+Android Developers

Android at Google I/O 2013: Keynote Wrapup

The last year has been an exciting one for Android developers, with an incredible amount of momentum. In fact, over 48 billion apps have been downloaded from Google Play to date, with over 2.5 billion app downloads in the last month alone.

This week, at Google I/O, our annual developer conference, we’re celebrating this momentum, and putting on stage a number of new features and advancements both for the Android platform and Google Play, to help you design, develop and distribute great apps to your users.

We just wrapped up the keynote, and wanted to share a number of those new features; we’ll be spotlighting some of them throughout the week both here, on Google+, and in 36 Android sessions and sandboxes at the Moscone center in San Francisco (with many of the sessions livestreamed at developer.google.com). Enjoy!

Google Play Services 3.1

Google Play Services is our platform for bringing you easier integration with Google products and new capabilities to use in your apps. Today we announced a new version of Google Play Services that has some great APIs for developers.

• Google Play games services give you great new social features that you can add to your games   achievements, leaderboards, cloud save, and real-time multiplayer
• Location APIs make it easy to add location- and context-awareness to your apps through a fused location provider, geofencing, and activity recognition
• Google Cloud Messaging enhancements let you use bidirectional XMPP messaging between server and devices and dismiss notifications
• Cross-Platform Single Sign On, which lets your users sign in once, for all of their devices using Google+ Sign-In.

Android Studio: A new IDE for Android development

Today we announced a new Integrated Development Environment (IDE) built just for Android, with the needs of Android developers in mind. It’s called Android Studio, it’s free, and it’s available now to try as an early access preview.

To build Android Studio, we worked with with JetBrains, creators of one of the most advanced Java IDEs available today. Based on the powerful, extensible IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition, we've added features and capabilities that are designed specifically for Android development, to simplify and optimize your daily workflow for creating Android apps.

Google Play Developer Console: a better distribution experience

Building awesome Android apps is only part of the story. Today we announced great new features in the Google Play Developer Console that give you more control over how you distribute your app and insight into how your app is doing:

• App translation service: a pilot program that lets you purchase professional translations for your app directly from the Developer Console.
• Revenue graphs: a new tab in the Developer Console gives you a summary of your app global app revenue over time.
• Alpha and beta testing and staged rollouts: you can now distribute your app to controlled alpha and beta test groups, or do staged rollouts to specific percentages of your userbase.
• Optimization tips: design your app for tablets and understand how to expand your app into new language markets.
• Google Analytics: launching later this summer, your Google Analytics usage stats will be viewable right in the Developer Console.
• Referral tracking: also launching later this summer, you’ll get a new report in Google Analytics to show what blogs, campaigns, and ads are driving your installs.

Follow the Android Sessions

Join us for the Android sessions today and through the week by livestream. Visit the I/O Live Stream schedule for details.