Google Play Store now detects and filters fraudulent app installs

Google today said that it’s launching enhanced systems for identifying and preventing fraudulent app installs that could otherwise affect app rankings on the Google Play Store.

Google obviously knows a thing or two about search rankings. The Play Store, full of mobile apps for Android devices, represents a search repository wholly different from the web, and now Google is cracking down on attempts to game this system.

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“If an install is conducted with the intention to manipulate an app’s placement on Google Play, our systems will detect and filter it,” Google search quality analyst Kazushi Nagayama and Google product manager Andrew Ahn wrote in a blog post. “Furthermore, developers who continue to exhibit such behaviors could have their apps taken down from Google Play.”

Nagayama and Ahn suggested that developers make sure any attempts to promote their apps are legitimate.

The move comes a couple of months after Apple announced that it would be taking “problematic and abandoned apps” out of its App Store. Google’s move is different but related — it’s about spammy apps, not crud. Basically, in both cases Google and Apple are improving search results in their respective app stores.