Targeted app promos are creeping into Play Store search recommendations
For many months now, the Google Play Store haslimited sto horizontally scrolling carousels in various tabs, labeled asSuggested For You. Now Google has been spotted testing new promotions for specific apps directly in the Play Store search field, but is this an expansion of Play Store ads, or not?
When you open the Google Play Store and tap the search bar at the top to jump straight to an app, you usually see four of the most recent searches underneath the bar. Tapping on any of these recent searches reopens them for you.9to5Googlereports seeing suggestions for new apps replace these search history entries withversion 33.0.17-21of the app store. The search history returns as soon as you type the first character of your query, with auto-complete prompts following.
We aren’t seeing these in Play Store search on our devices just yet, but Google could be running an A/B test for them. Interestingly, 9to5 notes that they never actually directly interacted with any of these suggested apps, and all of them happen to be games — Summoners War: Chronicles, Call of Duty Mobile Season 10, and Fishdom Solitaire. Call of Duty is a popular title frequently advertised in the Suggested for You section of the Play Store’s Games tab, but its placement in the search suggestions is new.
These immediately felt a lot like s. So what’s really going on here? Google has reached out to us to clarify that what 9to5 saw here are not actually paid ads. Instead, they’re part of a test for “an organic discovery feature to highlight apps and games with major updates, ongoing events, or offers that users may be interested in.” The company says that this test is intended to “help Google Play users find more joyful and useful experiences and to support our developer ecosystem.”
It sounds like the algorithms for generating those suggestions may need a little work, based on some of those seemingly out-of-the-blue game recommendations, but that’s what testing’s for, right? If you’re looking for more organic app suggestions, we suggest you take a look at our picks forthe best apps on the Play Store this year.
UPDATE: 2022/11/14 16:45 EST BY STEPHEN SCHENCK
Google statement
Added clarification from Google that these app suggestions are not paid ads.
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