There are always people who are on the lookout to make a quick buck. Sometimes they go about it the legal way, and sometimes they go about it the illegal way. In the mobile scene, what some developers do to bring attention to their app is by using all kinds of trickery, like manipulating app placement, fake reviews, and more.Turns out that Google has had enough of this and has announced that they will be looking to crack down on Play Store fraud. According to Google, “Today we are rolling out improved detection and filtering systems to combat such manipulation attempts. If an install is conducted with the intention to manipulate an app’s placement on Google Play, our systems will detect and filter it. Furthermore, developers who continue to exhibit such behaviors could have their apps taken down from Google Play.”
Now Google has always been pretty swift to act when it comes to handling fake apps or apps that violate its policy, so basically this move is kicking it into the next gear. Google adds, “These attempts not only violate the Google Play Developer Policy, but also harm our community of developers by hindering their chances of being discovered or recommended through our systems. Ultimately, they put the end users at risk of making wrong decisions based on inaccurate, unauthentic information.”