I was searching for crash reports sent by users via Android device.
If the user enters any specific details in description section and clicks Send, where this report is sent? Is it sent to Google or to the developer's email address?
You can deduct that the feedback is sent only to Google from two points:
Below the checkmark for "Include system logs" you'll see them saying that your system info will be sent to Google and a lot of legal policies for data manipulation since the feedback will contain sensitive information.
Normal crash reports contain information about the stack trace and some device information. If you will check the system info, you'll see a lot of sensitive information, information that Google keeps only for them in order to solve the problem themselves, since sending private information about your user to any developer would not be good idea.
When this kind of crashes take place, it's not your fault(usually) as a developer. If your app crashes constantly, then maybe you should try to open an issue and see what Google has to say about it. For example, the Facebook app crashes on a daily basis for me with the same behaviour, but I didn't find any reason for this.
I have been getting some amounts between $0.2 to $0.7 debited from my final payment from AdMob ads under the title "invalid activity" in my payment details.
Yes the amounts are small but i am still worried as i have been extra careful while testing i used the test keys and i have not told any of my friends to click on my ads or have clicked on them myself.
I did have the same issue for my web-site but that was due to some bots which i black-listed in the server access files so i am no longer getting such "invalid activity" on my blog earnings
I have built my apps in Ionic Framework.
So my question is how can i detect where the invalid activity is coming from in my app and how can i prevent it.
How can i detect where the invalid activity is coming from in my app
You can check a country wise view of requests on Google Adsense at this link. You can analyze and check where major traffic is from, where clicks are from, etc.
Fore more detailed reporting use Google Analytics for Android
How can i prevent it.
There is no fixed way of how you deal with that. You will need to take steps and write algorithms in your app based on your analysis. But, I dont think that is really required. If it is an invalid activity from a third party (NOT You) Google will take corrective actions. But, if it is by You, you are in trouble and may get the app suspended or account blocked.
google doesn't provide actual invalid activity because of security reason according to google terms& conditions
The Google Play Developer Console offers the Tracked Channels (UTM) view under User Acquisition → Performance which should be able to show a breakdown of which tagged links users clicked to get to the store listing, etc.
I have generated several different links to my app using the Google Play URL Builder, e.g.:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vandenmars.colortrek&referrer=utm_source%3Dso%26utm_medium%3Dlink%26utm_campaign%3Dlink%26utm_content%3DTBk
I did a couple of tests last week where I opened the Play Store using these links and installed the app on new devices immediately from there. Still, the Tracked Channels (UTM) list shows no entries.
A bit more background that may be relevant:
My app itself does not use the Google Analytics SDK and does not register a receiver for the INSTALL_REFERRER intentI would assume that the Play Store handles the links directly without requiring app interaction, especially since it can track store listing views that don't lead to installs, but maybe this is incorrect? Or maybe the store disables tracking based on the app manifest?
I opened the links in Chrome on my PC and clicked "Install" thereMaybe the links only get tracked if they are opened in the Play Store App on the actual device? Seems strange, but I am running a test on that right now, the data just hasn't updated yet.
The tagged installations I did were on days that have been processed alreadyIt sometimes takes Google a long time to update the "Performance" data, but the data I can see already includes this Sunday and the tests were done on Friday. So, unless the UTM tracking data takes even longer to get processed, it should already show up.
Do I need to enable something somewhere for this to work? Or am I doing something else wrong?
UPDATE 1:
Meanwhile, one entry has started showing up in the Tracked Channels (UTM) list. Unfortunately, as the help-text states, "UTM-tagged links that have a single store listing visitor [...] are included in the “Other” category." So I have no idea which of my test links it is, if any. The entry is only showing as a Store Listing Visitor, but not as an Installer.
The last day included in the stats is Wednesday (supposedly), which is also the day when I did the test of opening the link directly in the Play Store app on a device for the first time. I did install the app during that visit, but it was after I had uninstalled a previous installation.
So, here's what I learned from this:
It doesn't look like there is some on/off switch for UTM tagging that I need to enable.
Including the Analytics SDK and registering an INSTALL_REFERRER is not strictly needed for just the tracking of Store Listing Visitors, but it might be needed to track Installers/Buyers.
There may be a difference between visits to tagged links from a PC vs. from the Play Store app on a device.
This leaves the following questions:
Are UTM links only tracked by the Play Store app, or also by visits to http://play.google.com/...?
Does an app need to use the Analytics SDK to forward information about installs and purchases to the Play Store, or do these get tracked independently of the app like the store listing visitors?
Is only the first installation of an app on a specific device counted under Installers, or is a fresh install after an uninstall also counted? How about after a factory reset of the device?
Bonus question: Is there a way to expand the "Other" category? :)
UPDATE 2:
Now I'm back to square one: 3 days ago, I opened more test-links on different devices (including the one that I thought was the one that showed up last time), directly in the app store, installing the app immediately. The data shown includes everything up to and including two days ago, so these visits and installs should be tracked by now. Yet, the list does not show any additional entries beyond the one from update 1 above.
So, either I have absolutely no clue what should be going on, or this whole tracking system is one giant buggy mess... Some things I've read in random forums suggest the latter, but maybe I am missing something, too?
UPDATE 3:
This is getting stranger and stranger. Now, all of a sudden, I see an entry showing 14 store visits and 10 installs for "zedge/android"! Why would someone make their own utm tagged link for my app?!? On top of that, none of my other tests have ever shown up (still just the original entry under "Other") and I don't even see the 10 installs in the statistics... Looks like this whole thing is just plain broken... Correction welcome.
We're in the same situation too now. No Google Analytics set up, need to run some ads this weekend, so I'm going to try to use UTM tags to track the app installs.
There may be a difference between visits to tagged links from a PC vs.
from the Play Store app on a device.
Found this in their documentation
"Note: Over-the-air and web (play.google.com) impressions aren’t
tracked on your app’s User Acquisition page at this time."
If you want, send the link over and I can test it out.
Before direct user to Google Play app page, send GET request with UTM params to your own site. Register this site to Google Analitics. It will count page visits only.
I am going through the same problem. I wanted to test if the UTM source and UTM campaign from the new Dashboard required some SDK or API installed in the app itself. So I contacted Google Play Devs, I asked specifically if we needed Google Analytics and their response was:
this not the case and also there is nothing further that you can add to the app itself.
I did try downloading my own app and sent the link over to a couple of dozen people (bare in mind that the app does have a Google Analytics setup, but it is from 2016, so old version) with the following link
Power my Robot with UTM links setup
I put random words, and all the visits and downloads on both UTM Campaign and UTM Source showed under "Other" and not the words I put. I managed to get around 20 downloads from this link.
However, after questioning Google why it was showing under "Other" and not the word I put in the link, they said it is because of a minimum threshold, which they don't know the amount.
As mentioned above, I used this form to get the Google Play with the UTM tags.
And also, I agree with a comment above, that Apple simply works. From the campaign section in the dashboard, you can open the "Link Generator" and they specifically say that the minimum amount in order to show the number is at least 5 installs using the link in order to protect users' privacy. Google Play can learn something from Apple in this case.
I will try to keep this updated if anything changes on my stats. And feel free to click on the link above and install the app, open and then de-install, just to build up the numbers and see if I can cross the threshold and discover what is the minimum amount they require.
I confirm that the Google Play Store UTM tracking doesn't work with your configuration, as I have the same (no Google Analytics SDK, but firebase-core) and I can't see any installation listed in the Acquisition view of the Play Store.
I note that the Play Store documentation part about UTM tag has a link to an url builder on the Google Analytics Guide, so may be the solution in to install GA SDK.
Have found google page that suggest how to build url with utms: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v4/campaigns?hl=es#google-play-url-builder
This is an example:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id={application_id}&referrer=utm_source%3D{source_id}%26utm_medium%3D{medium}%26utm_term%3D{term}
i working on android application project that use Google Analytics. Application is still in aplha testing stage. After a few days of tests i noticed that in analytis dashboard is listed an iPhone device but there is no iPhone version of my application. Is it a problem with GA or some problems in my configuration? It's really strange and i'm worried if my application safety.
I will be grateful for any suggestions or informations.
This is so-called referral spam. More information in the bellow links:
http://moz.com/blog/how-to-stop-spam-bots-from-ruining-your-analytics-referral-data
https://megalytic.com/blog/how-to-filter-out-fake-referrals-and-other-google-analytics-spam
http://www.analyticsedge.com/2014/12/removing-referral-spam-google-analytics/
Updated
I've handled this issue like this:
Go to your app view in the Google Analytics.
Open the 'Admin' tab.
Click on 'View settings'.
There will be section called 'Bot Filtering', check the 'Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders' option.
From now on Google will remove the spam hits from their analytics. This solution has two issues, though:
Historical data will not be affected by this option, i.e. spam hits
which were made in the past will remain in your data, Google will
only filter your future hits.
Google promises to remove hits from known bots, which means that the
time from the new bot appearance to the moment when it will be
included in the Google filter list can be indefinitely long. I use
this solution for the last week though and didn't find any new bots
breaking through the filter.
I've a major issue with linking my Play Developer Console to Google Wallet. I've already search the Google Help for any solution and didn't find one. The problem is, that Error message appears after hitting “Set up a merchant account now” button in my Google Play Android Developer Console (Settings/Account Details). After that another screen pops out with an error:
Oops! An error occurred while processing your request.
Regardless of any steps I've done such as changing to a different browser(Firefox to Chrome and back), clearing cache&cookies and so on... nothing is working.
Any ideas?
Any resolution yet?
I just encountered the same issue. Also no followup from google teams.
A possible solution I am looking into is to use an alternative payment system such as http://www.zooz.com/
I have the same problem a few days ago. After exchanging several emails with the service, they didn't know to tell me what happened, only they made me waste time. Then I started to fill the form on the Wallet account to avoid having to write every time I tried to link the accounts, and in this form itself is run the Javascript and I notice that my address could not be longer than 64 characters... I wrote a short version and I got my accounts linked.
In short, if you can not link your Google Play and Google Wallet accounts, check the size of your inputs, Javascript alerts dont work fine.
BTW: Outside USA could also be the fault of the VAT-ID, try to leave it empty.