Support for 100MB APKs on Google Play

Posted by Kobi Glick, Google Play team

Smartphones are powerful devices that can support diverse tasks from graphically intensive games to helping people get work done from anywhere. We understand that developers are challenged with delivering a delightful user experience that maximizes the hardware of the device, while also ensuring that their users can download, install, and open the app as quickly as possible. It’s a tough balance to strike, especially when you’re targeting diverse global audiences.

To support the growing number of developers who are building richer apps and games on Google Play, we are increasing the APK file size limit to 100MB from 50MB. This means developers can publish APKs up to 100MB in size, and users will see a warning only when the app exceeds the 100MB quota and makes use of Expansion Files. The default update setting for users will continue to be to auto-updating apps over Wi-Fi only, enabling users to access higher quality apps and games while conserving their data usage.

Even though you can make your app bigger, it doesn’t always mean you should. Remember to keep in mind the following factors:

• Mobile data connectivity: Users around the world have varying mobile data connectivity speeds. Particularly in developing countries, many people are coming online with connections slower than those of users in countries like the U.S. and Japan. Users on a slow connection are less likely to install an app or game that is going to take a long time to download.
• Mobile data caps: Many mobile networks around the world give users a limited number of MB that they can download each month without incurring additional charges. Users are often wary of downloading large files for fear of exceeding their limits.
• App performance: Mobile devices have limited RAM and storage space. The larger your app or game, the slower it may run, particularly on older devices.
• Install time: People want to start using your app or game as quickly as possible after tapping the install button. Longer wait times increase the risk they’ll give up.

We hope that, in certain circumstances, this file size increase is useful and enables you to build higher quality apps and games that users love.

Games developer, Dots, share their Do’s and Don’ts for improving your visibility on Google Play

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Developer Marketing at Google Play
Editor’s note: A few weeks ago we shared some tips from game developer, Seriously, on how they’ve been using notifications successfully to drive ongoing engagement. This week, we’re sharing tips from Christian Calderon at US game developer, Dots, on how to successfully optimize your Play Store Listing. -Ed.

A well thought-out Google Play store listing can significantly improve the discoverability of your app or game and drive installations. With the recent launch of Store Listing Experiments on the Google Play Developer Console, you can now conduct A/B tests on the text and graphics of your store listing page and use the data to make more informed decisions.

Dots is a US-founded game developer which released the popular game, Dots, and its addictive sequel, TwoDots. Dots used its store listings to showcase its brands and improve conversions by letting players know what to expect.

Christian Calderon, Head of Marketing for Dots, shared his top tips with us on store listings and visibility on Google Play.

Do’s and Don’ts for optimizing store listings on Google Play

Do’s	Don’ts
Do be creative and unique with the icon. Try to visually convince the user that your product is interesting and in alignment with what they are looking for.	Don’t spam keywords in your app title. Keep the title short, original and thoughtful and keep your brand in mind when representing your product offering.
Do remember to quickly respond to reviews and implement a scalable strategy to incorporate feedback into your product offering. App ratings are important social proof that your product is well liked.	Don’t overload the ‘short description’. Keep it concise. It should be used as a call-to-action to address your product’s core value proposition and invite the user to install the application. Remember to consider SEO best practices.
Do invest in a strong overall paid and organic acquisition strategy. More downloads will make your product seem more credible to users, increasing the likeliness that a user will install your app.	Don’t overuse text in your screenshots. They should create a visual narrative for what’s in your game and help users visualize your product offering, using localization where possible.
Do link your Google Play store listing to your website, social media accounts, press releases and any of your consumer-facing channels that may drive organic visibility to your target market. This can impact your search positioning.	Don’t have a negative, too short or confusing message in your “What’s New” copy. Let users know what updates, product changes or bug fixes have been implemented in new versions. Keep your copy buoyant, informative, concise and clear.
Do use Video Visualization to narrate the core value proposition. For TwoDots, our highest converting videos consist of gameplay, showcasing features and events within the game that let the player know exactly what to expect.	Don’t flood the user with information in the page description. Keep the body of the page description organized and concise and test different structural patterns that works best for you and your product!

Use Google Play Store Listing Experiments to increase your installs

As part of the 100 Days of Google Dev video series, Kobi Glick from the Google Play team explains how to test different graphics and text on your app or game’s Play Store listing to increase conversions using the new Store Listing Experiments feature in the Developer Console.

Find out more about using Store Listing Experiments to turn more of your visits into installs.

The App Developer Business Kit: Now available in 10 languages

Posted by Sean Meng, a Product Marketing Manager on the AdMob team

Today we’re excited to launch The App Developer Business Kit in 10 more languages. The website includes tips for new app developers on building, promoting and monetizing your app. Check out the Business Kit in your language:

• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Portuguese
• Simplified Chinese
• Traditional Chinese
• Spanish
• British English

To help you make decisions about growing your app business in other regions, we’ve added 6 new market reports providing great insights about app users in Italy, Spain, Germany, Brazil, France, and Russia. Did you know that Brazilian smartphone users engage with ads more frequently than users in the US and Japan? Or that while nearly 2/3rds of French users exclusively download free apps, only 31% of Brazilian smartphone users do? Check out statistics like these about exciting regions around the world here.

Stay connected on all things mobile apps by following us on Google+ and Twitter.

Android Developer Story: Shifty Jelly drives double-digit growth with material design and expansion to the car and wearables

Posted by Lily Sheringham, Google Play team

Pocket Casts is a leading podcasting app on Google Play built by Australian-based mobile development company Shifty Jelly. The company recently achieved $1 million in sales for the first time, reaching more than 500K users.

According to the co-founder Russell Ivanovic, the adoption of material design played a significant role in driving user engagement for Pocket Casts by streamlining the user experience. Moreover, users are now able to access the app beyond the smartphone -- in the car with Android Auto, on a watch with Android Wear or on the TV with Google Cast. The rapid innovation of Android features helped Pocket Casts increase sales by 30 percent.

We chatted with co-founders and Android developers Russell and Philip Simpson to learn more about how they are growing their business with Android.

Here are some of the features Pocket Casts used:

• Material Design: Learn more about material design and how it helps you create beautiful, engaging apps.
• Android Wear: Extend your app to Android Wear devices with enhanced notifications or a standalone wearable app.
• Android Auto: Extend your app to an interface that’s optimized for driving with Android Auto.
• Google Cast: let your users cast your app’s content to Google Cast devices like Chromecast, Android TV, and speakers with Google Cast built-in.

And check out the Pocket Casts app on Google Play!

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Introducing new Android training programs with Udacity

Posted by Peter Lubbers, Senior Program Manager, Google Developer Training

We know how important it is for you to efficiently develop the skills to build better Android apps and be successful in your jobs. To meet your training needs, we’ve partnered with Udacity to create Android training courses, ranging from beginner to more advanced content.

Last week at Google I/O we announced the Android Nanodegree, an education credential that is designed for busy people to learn new skills and advance their careers in a short amount of time from anywhere at any time. The nanodegree ties together our Android courses, and provides you with a certificate that may help you be a more marketable Android developer.

Training courses

All training courses are developed and taught by expert Google instructors from the Developer Platform team. In addition to updating our popular Developing Android Apps course and releasing Advanced Android App Development, we now have courses for everyone from beginning programmers to advanced developers who want to configure their Gradle build settings. And then there's all the fun stuff in between—designing great-looking, high performance apps, making your apps run on watches, TVs, and in cars, and using Google services like Maps, Ads, Analytics, and Fit.

Each course is available individually, without charge, at udacity.com/google. Our instructors are waiting for you:

Android Nanodegree

You can also enroll in the new Android Nanodegree for a monthly subscription fee, which gives you access to coaches who will review your code, provide guidance on your project, answer questions about the class, and help keep you on track when you need it.

More importantly, you will learn by doing, focusing only on where you need to grow. Since the Nanodegree is based on your skills and the projects in your portfolio, you do not need to complete the courses that address the skills you already have. You can focus on writing the code and building the projects that meet the requirements for the Nanodegree credential. We’ll also be inviting 50 Android Nanodegree graduates to Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, for a three day intensive Android Career Summit in November. Participants will have the opportunity to experience Google’s company culture and attend workshops focused on developing their personal career paths. Participants will then leverage the skills learned from Udacity’s Android Nanodegree during a two-day hackathon.

To help you learn more about this program and and courses within it, Google and Udacity are partnering up for an "Ask the Experts" live streamed series. In the first episode on Wednesday, June 3rd at 2pm PDT, Join Sebastian Thrun, Peter Lubbers and Jocelyn Becker who will be answering your questions on the Nanodegree. RSVP here and ask and vote for questions here.

Android training in Arabic

We also believe that everyone has the right to learn how to develop Android apps. Today, there is a great need for developers in countries outside of the United States as software powers every industry from food and transportation to healthcare and retail. As a first step in getting the Android Nanodegree localized and targeted for individual countries, we have worked with the Government of Egypt and Udacity to create end-to-end translations of our top Android courses into Arabic (including fully dubbed video). Google will offer 2,000 scholarships to students to get a certificate for completing the Arabic version of the Android Fundamentals course. Google will also host job fairs and sessions for students with local employers and the Egyptian Government. For more information, see www.udacity.com/egypt.

Complete Android course catalog

Here are the currently-planned courses in the Android Nanodegree:

• Android App Development for Beginners: How to Make an Android App, with Katherine Kuan
• Developing Android Apps: Android Fundamentals, with Reto Meier, Katherine Kuan, Dan Galpin and Alex Lucas
• Advanced Android app development: Productionize and Publish Your Apps, with Dan Galpin, Ian Lake and Joanna Smith
• Google Play services: Use Google APIs to Improve Your Apps (Maps, Location, and more!), with Jocelyn Becker, Magnus Hyttsten and Laurence Moroney
• Android Ubiquitous Computing: Extend Apps to Wearables, TV and Auto, with Timothy Jordan, Wayne Piekarski and Joshua Gordon
• Android Performance: Optimizing Apps for Speed and Usability, with Colt McAnlis
• Android Design for Developers: Make Your Apps Material, with Nick Butcher and Roman Nurik
• Gradle for Android and Java: Build Better Apps Though Automation with Gradle

So get learning now at udacity.com/android

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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.

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Drive app installs through App Indexing

Posted by Lawrence Chang, Product Manager

You’ve invested time and effort into making your app an awesome experience, and we want to help people find the great content you’ve created. App Indexing has already been helping people engage with your Android app after they’ve installed it — we now have 30 billion links within apps indexed. Starting this week, people searching on Google can also discover your app if they haven’t installed it yet. If you’ve implemented App Indexing, when indexed content from your app is relevant to a search done on Google on Android devices, people may start to see app install buttons for your app in search results. Tapping these buttons will take them to the Google Play store where they can install your app, then continue straight on to the right content within it.

With the addition of these install links, we are starting to use App Indexing as a ranking signal for all users on Android, regardless of whether they have your app installed or not. We hope that Search will now help you acquire new users, as well as re-engage your existing ones. To get started, visit g.co/AppIndexing and to learn more about the other ways you can integrate with Google Search, visit g.co/DeveloperSearch.

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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.

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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).

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.

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A New Way to Promote Your App on Google Play

Posted by Michael Siliski, Product Management Director, Google Play

Google Play now reaches more than 1 billion people on Android devices in more than 190 countries, helping a growing number of developers like you build successful global businesses. In fact, in the past year, we paid more than $7 billion to developers distributing apps and games on Google Play. We remain as committed as ever to making Google Play the best place to find great apps, games and other entertainment.

App discovery plays a critical role in driving your continued success, and over the past year Google has provided best practices to enhance app discovery and engagement, as well as app promotion tools to get the most out of search and display advertising for developers. We are always looking for new ways to help you get your apps in front of potential new users. That’s why, in the next few weeks, we will begin piloting sponsored search results on Google Play, bringing our unique expertise in search ads to the store.

With more than 100 billion searches every month on Google.com, we’ve seen how search ads shown next to organic search results on Google.com can significantly improve content discovery for users and advertisers, both large and small. Search ads on Google Play will enable developers to drive more awareness of their apps and provide consumers new ways to discover apps that they otherwise might have missed.

In the coming weeks, a limited set of users will begin to see ads from a pilot group of advertisers who are already running Google search ads for their apps. We’ll have more to share in the coming months about the expansion of this program as we look at the results and feedback. We believe search ads will be a useful addition to Google Play for users and developers alike, and we hope this will bring even more success to our developer community.

Trulia sees 30% more engagement using notifications and further innovates with Android Wear

Posted by Laura Della Torre, Google Play team

Trulia’s mission is to make it as easy as possible for home buyers, sellers, owners and renters to navigate the real estate market. Originally a website-based company, Trulia is keenly aware that its users are migrating to mobile. Today, more than 50 percent of Trulia’s business comes from mobile and growth shows no sign of slowing, so they know that’s where they need to innovate.

In the following video, Jonathan McNulty, VP of Consumer Product, and Lauren Hirashima, Mobile Product Manager, at Trulia, talked about how the company successfully leveraged notifications on Android to increase app engagement by 30 percent and has seen 2x the amount of engagement on Android relative to other platforms:

Trulia continues to focus on improving their mobile experience, using Google’s geo-fencing technology to create Nearby Home Alerts, which lets users know when they walk near a new listing. Combined with Android Wear, Trulia now makes it possible for users to see details and photos about a property and call or email the agent, all directly from their watch.

Find out more about using rich notifications on Android and developing for Android Wear. And check out The Secrets to App Success on Google Play (ebook) which contains a chapter dedicated to the best practices and tools you can use to increase user engagement and retention in your app.

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Introducing a New Guide, “The Secrets to App Success on Google Play”

By Dom Elliott, Google Play team

With more than 50 billion apps and games downloaded in total, Google Play is helping developers and content creators around the world build successful businesses. In fact, we paid out more than $5 billion over the last year to developers for creating incredible apps that are changing the way people communicate, live, work, and play.

Developing an app or game and distributing it on Google Play is a good start, but it’s only the first step to building a sustainable business. That’s why we’ve written “The Secrets to App Success on Google Play,” a detailed playbook on the best practices and tools you can use to maximize the reach, retention, and revenue of your new app.

The guide is separated into the following sections:

• Publishing on Google Play — using the Google Play Developer Console to distribute your app to over 1 billion Android users worldwide.
• Quality — The fundamentals of building a great app and an insight into the Google Play guidelines and policies.
• Discoverability & reach — Maximizing your app's discoverability and reaching the widest audience possible.
• Engagement & retention — Converting installations into active users and improving user retention.
• Monetization — Monetization strategies to generate ongoing, growing revenue streams.
• Measurement with Google Analytics — Understanding your users and improving your app experience, conversions, and marketing.
• Going global — Launching your app in local markets around the world.

Download the guide now in English (PDF, 11MB) or get it on Google Play. We’ll release the guide in more languages in the coming months. If you’re in the US or the UK, we also have a limited number of printed copies that we are offering to send for free. Request a printed copy here.

Once you’ve checked out the guide, we’d love to hear your feedback so we can continue to improve, let us know what you think.

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Your Chance to be on TV!

By Tarjei Vassbotn and Dan Galpin, Developer Advocates, Android TV

We’re excited to see the launch of Nexus Player, the first consumer streaming media player running Android TV. Android TV delivers an entertainment experience tailored for users, including movies, shows, games and more.
Now is a great time to develop apps for Android TV that reach a whole new audience.

Starting today, you can publish your apps for Android TV on Google Play, the largest digital store for apps and games. We’ve provided guidance on how to get started building great apps for Android TV in this post.

"Google has done an insanely good job to ease the developer’s task of creating a TV application, mainly thanks to the Leanback support library. It literally takes 2 hours to create a fully working and possibly fancy app, which is awesome."

- Sebastiano Gottardo

A high bar for quality experiences

We want to offer the best possible experience for users to enjoy your apps and games. To make this possible, your Android TV app must meet the basic requirements for usability. When your app meets these requirements, users will be able to discover and download it directly on their Android TV devices.

Even if you have already uploaded your app to the Google Play Developer Console, you will need to add TV graphics and screenshots, and opt-in to distribution on TV on the Pricing & Distribution page. For complete information about the requirements and process of publishing your Android TV app for Google Play, make sure to check out the publishing documentation.

Get started!

With our Leanback Library we’ve made it easy for you to extend your existing app to the TV screen or even build a completely new app for Android TV. For a quick look at the Leanback Library, check out this DevBytes video.

We’ve only begun scratching the surface of what’s possible with this new form factor, and we are very excited to see what you will build, start developing today!

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The fastest route between voice search and your app

By Jarek Wilkiewicz, Developer Advocate, Google Search

How many lines of code will it take to let your users say Ok Google, and search for something in your app? Hardly any. Starting today, all you need is a small addition to your AndroidManifest.xml in order to connect the Google Now SEARCH_ACTION with your searchable activity:

<activity android:name=".SearchableActivity">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="com.google.android.gms.actions.SEARCH_ACTION"/>
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

Once you make these changes, your app can receive the SEARCH_ACTION intent containing the SearchManager.QUERY extra with the search expression.

At Google, we always look for innovative ways to help you improve mobile search and drive user engagement back to your app. For example, users can now say to the Google app: “Ok Google, search pizza on Eat24” or “Ok Google, search for hotels in Maui on TripAdvisor.”

This feature is available on English locale Android devices running Jelly Bean and above with the Google app v3.5 or greater. Last but not least, users can enable the Ok Google hot-word detection from any screen, which offers them the fastest route between their search command and your app!

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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.

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New Demographic Stats in Google Play Games Services

By Ben Frenkel, Google Play Games team

Hey game developers, back in March you may remember we added new game statistics in the Google Play Developer Console for those of you who had implemented Google Play Games: our cross-platform game services for Android, iOS and the web.

Starting today, we're providing more insights into how your games are being used by adding country, age, and gender dimensions to the existing set of reports available in the Developer console. You’ll see demographics integrated into Overview stats as well as the Players reports for New and Active users.

In the Overview stats you can now see highlights of activity by age group, most active countries, and gender.

With a better understanding of your users’ demographic composition, you'll be able to make more effective decisions to improve retention and monetization. Here a few ways you could imagine using these new stats:

• You just launched your new game globally, and expected it do particularly well in Germany. Using country demographic data, you see that Germany is much less active than expected. After some digging, you realize that your tutorial was not properly translated to German. Based on this insight, you immediately roll out a fix to see if you can improve active users in Germany.

In the Players stats section the new metrics reveal trends in how your app is doing across age groups, countries, and gender.

• After Looking at your new demographics report you realize that your game is really popular with women in their mid-20s. Your in-app purchase data corroborates this, showing that the one female hero character is the most popular purchase. Empowered by this data, you race to add female hero characters to your game.

Additionally, if you're already using Google Play game services, there's no extra integration needed! By logging in to the Google Play Developer Console you can start using demographics to better inform your decisions today.

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Google Play services 4.4

A new release of Google Play services has now been rolled out to the world, and as usual we have a number of features that can make your apps better than before. This release includes a major enhancement to Maps with the introduction of Street View, as well as new features in Location, Games Services, Mobile Ads, and Wallet API.

Here are the highlights of Google Play services release 4.4:

Google Maps Android API

Starting with a much anticipated announcement for the Google Maps Android API: Introducing Street View. You can now embed Street View imagery into an activity enabling your users to explore the world through panoramic 360-degree views. Programmatically control the zoom and orientation (tilt and bearing) of the Street View camera, and animate the camera movements over a given duration. Here is an example of what you can do with the API, where the user navigates forward one step:

We've also added more features to the Indoor Maps feature of the API. You can turn the default floor picker off - useful if you want to build your own. You can also detect when a new building comes into focus, and find the currently-active building and floor. Great if you want to show custom markup for the active level, for example.

Activity Recognition

And while we are on the topic of maps, let’s turn to some news in the Location API. For those of you that have used this API, you may have seen the ability already there to detect if the device is in a vehicle, on a bicycle, on foot, still, or tilting.

In this release, two new activity detectors have been added: Running, and Walking. So a great opportunity to expand your app to be even more responsive to your users. And for you that have not worked with this capability earlier, we hardly need to tell the cool things you can do with it. Just imagine combining this capability with features in Maps, Games Services, and other parts of Location...

Games Services Update

In the 4.3 release we introduced Game Gifts, which allows you to request gifts or wishes. And although there are no external API changes this time, the default requests sending UI has been extended to now allow the user to select multiple Game Gifts recipients. For your games this means more collaboration and social engagement between your players.

Mobile Ads

For Mobile Ads, we’ve added new APIs for publishers to display in-app promo ads, which enables users to purchase advertised items directly. We’re offering app developers control of targeting specific user segments with ads, for example offering high-value users an ad for product A, or new users with an ad for product B, etc.

With these extensions, users can conveniently purchase in-app items that interest them, advertisers can reach consumers, and your app connects the dots; a win-win-win in other words.

Wallet Fragments

For the Instant Buy API, we’ve now reduced the work involved to place a Buy With Google button in an app. The WalletFragment API introduced in this release makes it extremely easy to integrate Google Wallet Instant Buy with an existing app. Just configure these fragments and add them to your app.

And that’s another release of Google Play services. The updated Google Play services SDK is now available through the Android SDK manager. Coming up in June is Google I/O, no need to say more…

For the release video, please see:
DevBytes: Google Play services 4.4

For details on the APIs, please see:
New Features in Google Play services 4.4

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Google Play services 4.3

Google Play services 4.3 has now been rolled out to the world, and it contains a number of features you can use to improve your apps. Specifically, this version adds some new members to the Google Play services family: Google Analytics API, Tag Manager, and the Address API. We’ve also made some great enhancements to the existing APIs; everything to make sure you stay on top of the app game out there.

Here are the highlights of the 4.3 release.

Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

The Analytics API and Google Tag Manager has existed for Android for some time as standalone technologies, but with this release we are incorporating them as first class citizens in Google Play services. Those of you that are used to the API will find it very similar to previous versions, and if you have not used it before we strongly encourage you to take a look at it.

Google Analytics allows you to get detailed statistics on how you app is being used by your users, for example what functionality of your app is being used the most, or which activity triggers users to convert from an advertised version of an app to paid one. Google Tag Manager lets you change characteristics of your app on-the-fly, for example colors, without having to push an update from Google Play.

Google Play Games services Update

The furious speed of innovation in Android mobile gaming has not slowed down and neither have we when it comes to packing the Google Play Game services API with features.

With this release, we are introducing game gifts, which allows players to send virtual in-game requests to anyone in their Google+ circles or through player search. Using this feature, the player can send a 'wish' request to ask another player for an in-game item or benefit, or a 'gift' request to grant an item or benefit to another player.

This is a great way for a game to be more engaging by increasing cross player collaboration and social connections. We are therefore glad to add this functionality as an inherent part of the Games API, it is an much-wanted extension to the multi-player functionality included a couple of releases ago. For more information, see: Unlocking the power of Google for your games.

Drive API

The Google Drive for Android API was just recently added as a member of the Google Play services API family. This release adds a number of important features:

• Pinning - You can now pin files that should be kept up to date locally, ensuring that it is available when the user is offline. This is great for users that need to use your app with limited or no connectivity
  
• App Folders - An app often needs to create files which are not visible to the user, for example to store temporary files in a photo editor. This can now be done using App Folders, a feature is analogous to Application Data Folders in the Google Drive API
  
• Change Notifications - You can now register a callback to receive notifications when a file or folder is changed. This mean you no longer need to query Drive continuously to check if the data has changed, just put a change notification on it
  

In addition to the above, we've also added the ability to access a number of new metadata fields.

Address API

This release will also includes a new Address API, which allows developers to request access to addresses for example to fill out a delivery address form. The kicker is the convenience for the user; a user interface component is presented where they select the desired address, and bang, the entire form is filled out. Developers have been relying on Location data which works very well, but this API shall cater for cases where the Location data is either not accurate or the user actually wants to use a different address than their current physical location. This should sound great to anyone who has done any online shopping during the last decade or so.

That’s it for this time. Now go to work and incorporate these new features to make your apps even better!
And stay tuned for future updates.

For the release video, please see:
DevBytes: Google Play Services 4.3

For details on the APIs, please see:
Google Analytics
Google Tag Manager
Google Play Games services Gifts
Google Drive Android API - Change Events
Google Drive Android API - Pinning
Google Drive Android API - App Folder
Address API

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