We've just released an app to the PlayStore, and this app name contains a hyphen, which makes it unfindable in the PlayStore unless I enclose the name with double-quotes.
As far as the package name goes, the hyphen is replaced with an underscore there to follow the docs' conventions, so no problems there...
Can I fix the findability while keeping the hyphen, or alternatively can I remove the hyphen and republish without causing trouble for users who've already downloaded the app with its current name.
First off, some general information about this can be found here
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9042516?hl=en
The title that is displayed in the playstore is just something you can change at any time through the developer console.
The actual title of the application can be changed in the AndroidManifest
<application
...
android:label="#string/app_name"
.../>
As long as you don't change the package name there should be no problem for current users.
Also, in my experience it takes quite some while before playstore search indexing is able to easily find your app with generic terms and strings. Brand new apps just have trouble showing up in general.
There is a reason why you can find WhatsApp with a completely misspelled word like: what-app. Basically the bigger you are, the more easily people can find you.
Related
A few days ago, I got an alert in my play console that they added more characters to the app title limit. I have an extremely highly rated and high performing multiplayer game that was ranked in the top charts #31 out of many thousands in a very competitive game category and frequently in the trending top charts as well. Within an hour of changing the title, it was completely gone from the top charts and not even ranked at all. All I did was add the word "Multiplayer" to the end of the game title so it changed from "Game Name" to "Game Name Multiplayer". This game gets multiple thousands of organic downloads per day and only 24 hours after this happened there have been 200 downloads and we are in a panic because this obviously killed the monetization dead in it's tracks literally overnight. This top charts multiplayer game is now dead. Can anybody chime in on this and possibly explain why adding the word multiplayer to the game title caused it to not even rank at all and not come back after 2 full days? That seems like an incredibly harsh punishment and is counter productive to the health of the play store. Has anybody else experienced this?
normally changing the app's name or the package name(application id) is never a good practice: it totally changes the ASO(it's the SEO for the apps) so it can(and normally it does) kill your business.
1° I know it's not the case but remember that if you change your package name(also known as applicationId into the manifest.xml) your app no more exists because you changed the name and the URL that linked to your app, so your entire work has gone forever!
2° as I said your old app's name, even if it's really similiar to your actual name, is different somehow, so play store first MUST check your name is not violating google policies(generally 1-2 days to check your new name is OK) and this revision is obviously negative for your ASO; secondly it has to reposition your new name that is like a new instance, not a similiar thing that exploit your old success.
I'm sorry, I have some apps, I understand.. I would try to contact google support:
from the play store homepage click on the question mark above on the right(next to the gear), click it and it will pop up a window on the bottom: inside that little window there is something like "contact us" and you can choose a chat or even a phone number. Maybe they can help you. Sorry if I don't post the number or the email but it changes depending on your country. Let me know if I can help somehow.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT THING:
have you changed the label attribute inside application tag of the manifest?
<application
android:label="#string/app_name" />
According to the Developers Blog from Google, there are things that you can't change:
Once you publish your application under its manifest package name, this is the unique identity of the application forever more. Switching to a different name results in an entirely new application, one that can’t be installed as an update to the existing application.
The most obvious and visible of these is the “manifest package name,” the unique name you give to your application in its AndroidManifest.xml.
So, if you change it, it becomes a new app, and doing so it's subject to the same marketing etc. problems and battles that all new apps are.
Sorry to hear that happened to you, but whenever you change the name of an application, you are essentially creating a new object. So let's say your old game A was doing well and you wanted to change the name. Well by doing so, you created new game B, even with the same assets, which is linked differently. From my understanding of the app stores, it checks for this link to verify the app is authentic, and from there will retrieve the information that you push to the app. By changing the name, you have inherently broke the information chain, causing the plummet that you saw with your app.
It is unfortunate that this occurred, but nevertheless that's how it works, at least from my understanding. Hopefully this was insightful for you, if you had not previously thought about this.
I'm about to change the application name of a fairly popular Android app published on Google Play.
I know how to do it, but I would also like to be sure that nothing but the name will be changed. For example I don't want to loose the application's position in the search results.
Is there anyone that has renamed a published application and can confirm that nothing but the name will change?
Best regards,
Andreas
EDIT: With "application name" I'm refering to the application label that you set in the manifest file, not the package name or the name of the apk.
If you mention that the app has changed name within the description i.e. "App1 is now App2!"
It should still show up in search when people search the old name, for 'rankings' it's based on the package name and should keep it's position.
I wrote an application named "Bio View", if I search for my application in Google Play, it does not show up, instead if I search BlueSkyBio (the "appname" variable from the manifest is named that way), i can find my app.
<application
android:icon="#drawable/logo"
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:largeHeap="true"
android:theme="#style/AppTheme" >
<string name="app_name">BlueSkyBio</string>
My question is, how can i add tags to my application, like: bio, view, bioview, etc. So that I will be sure people can find it ?
FoamyGuy has answered on a comment for my question:
you can put them in your description. But there is no real "tags" concept on the Android market. And furthermore the search algorithm is somewhat of a black box, it takes many things into consideration when picking the order of results which is why a search for your exact application name will not always result in your app being at the top (or even near the top) of the list of results. – FoamyGuy Apr 5 at 14:34
There now appears to be a Tags option in the Google Play Console, but they are predefined tags to choose from, so it's pretty limited, but may help some people finding this question:
Play Console Screenshot
Yes, Google has introduced this option now. You can add tags in google play console under
Store Presence -> Store Listing -> Manage Tags
you can add your keywords in description
Example
Keywords: leaynik, SOS, eyes, l3ynik, la3yink
UPDATE ANSWER
seems my way is old now and google play add Tags
according to #patrickbadley answer
I am wondering which name will be better for my app. I am thinking about experiment, which will change name of application (in 10% downloaded apps). Later I could check statistics which app was used more often.
Is this possible?
No. The app name is specified in your manifest so it will be static. You could change the name in the titlebar of the app though.
Picking a good name is key.
depending on exactly what you want you have a few options. You can call
this.setTitle("New Title Here");
from an Activity and this will change the title that appears at the top of the screen just beneath the notification bar. If you are trying to change the title that appears in the launcher, or on the home screen under the icon I don't think you can do this programmatically. You'd have to create two seperate versions of your application and use the different values for < application android:label> inside your manifest for each of them. Or maybe you could create another values folder like values-hdpi if the values folder works the same as the layout and drawable folders (which I suspect it does, but I've never tested.) then it would pull the value from the Strings.xml file inside the hdpi folder if the device has high density display, so you could get a different name for those devices. Maybe using this method you could use a language modifier like values-esp and somehow force the app to go into 'spanish mode' for a certain subset of users so that it pulls this alternate value.
If I understand your question correctly, you want to know if it's possible to test different names on the Android Market, correct?
The only way to do this with the Google Market is to have two separate copies of your app, but using different package names for each. The name that appears in the Market is set on the Developer Console, and while it can be changed, you will not see two different entries for your app in the market.
This is because the market uses your package name to identify your app, not the app name that you supply.
So, while it's easy to change the display name of the app while it is running by using setTitle as #Tim and #Robby have said, this only changes the app title while it is running - it does not affect the name used in the Android package manager, and it also does not affect the name displayed in the Market.
As I say above, if you are wanting to test which name is more popular and therefore results in more downloads, you will need to have multiple apps on the market with different package names. You will also then have to consider how to handle upgrades, and if one name turns out to be very popular, I don't think there's any facility to "upgrade" the other users to your new package name since they are different packages and therefore there is no upgrade path. This means you'll either have to inconvenience users of the old name by somehow asking them to switch to the new app name, or maintain all named versions of your app for the expected lifetime of it.
If you do get your users to switch to the new app, you will then also have to consider how to migrate their data. This can be done (3G watchdog does it when you upgrade from the lite version to pro), but it's an extra layer of complexity that you can avoid.
My android app has a two word app name, and the 2nd word doesn't fit on the first line below the app icon. The OS doesn't automatically carry the 2nd word over to the 2nd line so it just gets cut off. I was able to use a "\n" as part of the app name string instead of a space, and that forced the 2nd word to display on the 2nd line. However, when I try to upload my app on the market I get an error (about the icon being improperly formatted, which really means that I have a newline in my app name, google needs to get their error messages straight but that's a different topic).
So, I've seen other apps on the market that don't have a problem showing the 2nd word in the app name on a second line. How do I do the same and get past the market upload?
Thanks.
From what I understand, this is a feature, not a bug. Only custom roms seem to allow more than one line for the names.
Even my application had two lines application name. Earlier the name was shown as only one line application name. I just uninstalled the application from device and re-installed it and my problem is solved.
May this helps someone.
\r\n worked for me, add it where you want to line break
I'd look at some projects that do not have the problem, see how they define things in their manifest and string resources, and try to match them. Barcode Scanner (ZXing) is one such app. This sample app from one of my books also successfully has its two-word name split over two lines.