App Store Optimization in 2022: Key Google Play Changes

What is up app nation. It is Steve P. Young founder of Appmasters.com. The place you go when you want action packed, content related, helping you go yep. Downloads and more importantly, those revenues. And in part two of ASO in 2022, we're going to really take a look, a deep dive into Google play in some of the dramatic changes that have occurred. And. Joining me just like in part one is Rita from ASO mobile.net. Rito.

Welcome back. Hey guys, I'm here again. I think the biggest change that is happening on Google play is the fact that Google is now going from 50 characters to 30 characters for the. Title, and that is their magic change. Isn't that? So, uh, definitely fewer characters and, uh, no misleading symbols in app icon, snow emoji. So you need to provide only clear keywords, uh, but, um, you know, Now it will, it will. When it'll start, I think the developers will be a bit stressed of changing that, but still needs to stick to the rules.

What have you seen on your end? I know on our end, some of our clients who have made this day. And even just people in our YouTube livestreams who have changed from 50 to 30, they're like, all right, Google, I hear you. I'm going to change it to 30. They've actually seen some dramatic decreases some down, going down in downloads. What have you guys seen on your guys's in clients? We definitely vote for command of changing it right now.

It really can lead to the decrease in the download. So what we suggest is just to keep, uh, the select old number as long as. Until definitely we need to change that. I will. You agree? And that's sort of the thing that I'm telling my clients too, is, you know, we have one client where we're like, oh, we go, it was like 30% decrease in downloads. And we've been just telling them, Hey, if you want to change it, we can change it for you.

Because if you do want to update your Google playlisting, you will have to have 30 characters for all your localizations. And so. If you are doing well, wait is long. Like Rita said, wait as long as possible to change it. And then what ends up happening? And this is what happened on apple. When they went down to their character limits to 30 as well is they just started indexing the first 30. And so the last 20 characters ended up just not being a factor in your listing, but if you can wait, like when you said, wait as long as possible, And the other thing Rita that I want to mention too, is what you kind of talked about with the icon.

I know a lot of app developers on Google tend to put new hot, these type of words, free in their app icons and even free in their short descriptions to do all that stuff. And that's no longer going to be allowed. So want to make sure you get on that? Absolutely. They will not be able to do that anymore. So probably, uh, the guys need to, you know, to take notes on how to change the name, uh, for the, for the future. And by the way, as you mentioned about the changes that touch all localizations, that's really true.

And we need to bear in minds about languages because some languages definitely needs more characters. Like, so yeah, that needs to be taken into. Yeah. And I think the ones, you know, which languages are. So for those who are localizing, which languages are cheated, most developers pay attention to the ones that require the more characters, not the Asian characters, right. The agents, you can fit a ton of words in there, but what other languages are you talking about?

I'm different. Just talking about the French. Um, and German, I would think that these are the typical examples. They need more characters. Yeah. And the D and the crappy thing about the emojis thing, too. You mentioned this no more emojis. I just want to talk on this point will a bit, because we have tried that and it actually does work. Right. And so not being able to utilize, I think long description is okay. I'm not sure about that, but I know the short description or that the app title definitely can't use emojis.

I, I, I do think that without them to be a little bit sad, but sad emoji, even sad emojis, even that is not acceptable. So yeah, just a really dry description with clear key words, but this is what they want. So that's it. That's it? Yeah. So just to be clear, cause we, we took some notes on this. Or repeated special characters in that title, icon or developer name. So it looks like short description, long description.

You guys are okay on that front. All right. That's been the biggest change. And I think that's been the one that really a lot of app developers are hurting going from 50 to 30. Anything else you want to mention on just before we move on to the. Optimization side of things. Anything else you want to mention on the Google play? I think this is just, um, if, to sum up, I want to repeat that better. Not to be too fast, you know, and to, uh, make this number like 30 characters, but just to wait and make notes or how you're going to change it.

If you have a lot of things. Yes. I agree. Great point. Okay. The next thing I want to talk about and just, I have no idea if this works, so I would love your guys' insight on this reader, but I've been really trying to optimize YouTube videos. And I come from, went back when I did have a job before I did this app thing, but I was at a video company and we saw that blog post. Videos actually did better in search results.

And then also that optimizing your YouTube video because I'm obviously on YouTube actually does work. So I started thinking like, Hey, can we start optimizing a YouTube video? That's on Google play and can we get better ASL ranks? On that. So what are you guys seeing on your end from YouTube description? Am I crazy? You know, Google play publishers use vetoes, like roughly three times more frequently than the app stores publishers.

So probably we do ease important. The visual elements, you know, a lot of people are originally really visual. So probably dos are we commanded, um, for, for the video editors, um, streaming services, food delivery, online shopping, and your app preview video for Google play will be uploaded to YouTube. So this is what you need to know. Yeah. I'm like iOS where a video where we see mixed results with video actually hurting.

Downloads on Google play. You don't actually see the video until you're actually in the listing. So Google play, you know, on the search results, you only see the app icon and on iOS, you see the video in the screenshots on the search results. And so that's why I'm like, there's no real downside because we've seen mixed results on iOS. There's no real downside to this. You will have to upload into. Now we are running tests, like, should the video be unlisted?

Should it be public? We are running some tests on that. I personally believe if it's a good video, it should be public because you might get just some visual, like visibility on YouTube searches. And so that's what we're doing. In terms of like testing, right. One of our clients, we optimize it and kept it unlisted. And then now we're going to see the results and then we're going to make it public and then see. Yeah.

And like we, uh, sad boys. Um, when we met last time, uh, testing is a must so needs to make sure to upload one video for each language. That's what I wanted to add, or just use a transcripts, you know, in different languages. So yeah. And I think the, when you're optimizing your to video, the thing that I would say in the video is to do research on that stuff. The important to really mention are the main keywords you're targeting.

So whatever you have in your app title, I've been tending to put into the title on YouTube as well. Maybe put a pending app to it. And then the short description or the description on YouTube. I, I know just like taking parts of the short description and long description, but not all of it. Certain pieces of it. Cause I didn't want too long of a description on YouTube. And then lastly, it's the tags on YouTube. So that's where I feel like is the biggest win for app developers.

YouTube has tags, just like keyword fields on iOS. And I've been putting a lot of competitors in there and I'm trying to see if putting competitors in there helps our Google play explore downloads because maybe in the similar apps section of Google play, we're able to be listed there and then see that. So for one of our clients, I did a case study on. Just one. So sample size is very small, but we saw a increase in Google play search downloads, small ones, like 15, 20%, but a huge one.

Granted it was small numbers anyways, but a huge, like a hundred percent increase in Google play. Downloads and his he's a completely paid app. And so it's a big win for him. And you see again, if we talk about the Google play it's video, YouTube video and video, uh, as we said, so different, uh, stores, different auditory people, and that's how. All right, read it. Let's end with this. Like in terms of making a good video, do you have any suggestions on what we should be doing to make sure our video is actually a good video that will actually lead to more downloads or I know I have two recommendations and the first one is to, to make vetoes short.

Nobody wants to watch long videos. So like first start the second. That's definitely enough. And you know, what's most important is, um, ever since should be understandable without the sound because when people watch the videos and they are, for example, on a Boston and some public places, they definitely wasn't muted, but they needed to get the. Like to make me do a short and understandable without the south two factors.

I love that point. I love that without sound, because most of the time we don't see it and then they want to just show off the app as well. And so make it like a trailer, you know, it is, it is like a demo starts. I mean, I would say, yeah, yeah. And start small. Like you don't need to go super sophisticated and high. You know, it's not like a movie trailer. You just need to test small. See if that optimization helps increases downloads.

If it doesn't maybe take it out, but, you know, start, I always say start small with the video side of things, you can get started pretty easily. I mean, you can go on Canva. I'm sure you can get something done really easily on camera. Anything else read it that we might've missed, that you wanna make sure we cover. I think it's pretty nice. My recommendations. I hope you help. I'm sure they will. All right guys, in part three, we're going to talk all about how potentially you might need to give your ASO a push.

And so back in the days, we used to be able to launch an app and then optimize the heck out of the AEs. Boom, you get thousands of downloads, but these days I feel, and then Rita will get your, what do you feel, Rita? You feel like ASO sometimes need a little bit of a push from a paid marketing perspective and that's what we're going to discuss. Yeah. So we're going to talk about what channels to be using, what channels are the most effective and AB um, different gray hat strategies.

We'll figure it out. Let's stay tuned for part three. When we talk about ASO and needing to. And Rita, if the audience wants to figure out how to do or competitive analysis, what keywords they're, your competitors are ranking well for what keywords you should be trying to rank for and all the data that you need to make the intelligent decisions for ASO. I recommend checking out ASO mobile. Dot net is the website Rita, anything else you want to cover before we say, but I think, um, we definitely should share something interesting the next time.

And for now I think I shared the over there warranted. I read it with the teas. All right, guys, we'll see you in part three. See you later.