According to ASO World report based on thousands of case studies, we found that 77% of people will read at least one review before downloading an app or game, and 100% of users browsing on the stores that discover an app will see the average rating.

The app reviews and rating retention and the positive app reviews acquisition would be one of the most important things for many app marketers since so many app reviews be removed on the Google Play store recently. Here, we focus on the solutions to the frequent removal of app reviews on the Google Play store and to leverage app reviews for higher conversion rates.

When we're looking for the answers about why your app reviews are deleted, the first thing that needs to be considered is checking the related Google Play official policies one by one, to check whether the relevant regulations are violated.

Google Play official policies about the app reviews and ratings

Ratings and reviews are meant to be helpful and trustworthy. Reviewing content on Google Play is a great way to share helpful feedback and assist other Google Play users in finding great content and services.

Guidelines for writing a good app review

· Make your reviews useful and informative.
· Try to include both positives and drawbacks.
· Keep it readable; check grammar and spelling, and don't use excessive capitalization and punctuation.
· Be nice to others.

Google Play's policies for ratings and reviews are below. Reviews that don't follow these policies will be removed, and anyone who repeatedly or egregiously violates them may lose the ability to post reviews on Google Play.

Spam and fake app reviews

Your reviews should reflect the experience you've had with the content or service you're reviewing.
· Don't post fake or inaccurate reviews.
· Don't post the same review multiple times.
· Don't post reviews for the same content from multiple accounts.
· Don't post reviews to mislead other users or manipulate the rating.
· Don't post reviews on behalf of others.
· Don't misrepresent your identity or your connection to the content you're reviewing.

Off-topic reviews

Keep reviews on-topic and relevant to the content, service, or experience you're reviewing.
· Don't post solicitations, political or social commentary, or anything else that is irrelevant to the content, service, or experience you're reviewing.

Advertising

We want reviews to be useful, and they aren't useful if they're promoting something other than the content or service you're reviewing.
· Don't post promotional or commercial content for any products or services, including affiliate or referral-based promotions.
· Don't post phone numbers, email addresses, or links to other websites.
Conflict of interest
Reviews are most valuable when they're genuine and unbiased. They should be written by people who aren't motivated by financial gain.
· Don't offer or accept money, products, or services in exchange for posting reviews.
· Don't review content, services, or experiences if you own or work for the business that created it.

Copyrighted content

Reviews should be your own and reflect your personal opinions.
· Don't post reviews that infringe on the intellectual property rights of others, including copyright.

Personal and confidential information

Reviews are meant to share experiences, and you can express the way you feel about something without revealing sensitive personal information.
· Don't post personal or confidential information, such as a physical address or driver's license number.

Illegal content

Your reviews must comply with the law and any terms or legal agreements you have agreed to.
· Don't post reviews that contain or link to illegal content.

Sexually explicit content

Google Play is intended for a broad audience, and reviews should reflect that.
· Don't post reviews that contain, promote, or solicit sexually explicit content.
· Don't post reviews that depict children in sexual situations or address them in a sexual manner.

Hate speech

Google Play is intended for all people, and reviews should reflect that.
· Don't promote violence, condone violence, or incite hatred toward an individual or group based on their race, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.

Offensive reviews

Google Play is meant to entertain and inform, not attack and offend.
· Don't post obscene, profane, or offensive language.
· Don't post reviews that harass, bully, or attack others.

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Common reasons that your Google Play reviews get deleted

We all know that Android reviews are easier to get compared to Apple, and there are many Facebook communities that exchange reviews and many websites that sell them. Since 2016, Google decided to fight against fake reviews. Surprisingly Google removes many real reviews from the app every day. The algorithm considers some reviews to be fake and removes them.

What can cause the algorithm to detect your reviews and delete it, we conclude three types from Google Play policies.

Spam comments 

Signs of spam comments include:

• Copy and paste comments (the text of the comment is the same as the text used by other applications)
• Ads for other services
• Offering money for comments
• Comments without text
• Comments with links to websites, phone numbers or email addresses
• Comments with no meaningful words, only letters (e.g. "ghghghghg").

Aggressive and offensive comments

Offensive comments usually contain:

• Hate speech
• Uncensored remarks
• Bullying
• Harassment
• Sexual background
• Violence and promotion of violence
• Any discrimination against others
• Comments with aggressive emoticons

Off-topic and false comments

Signs of false comments include:

• Anything unrelated to the content, service or experience you are viewing, such as complaints about pricing or advertising in the app
• Solicitation, political or social commentary
• One-word reviews, or multiple reviews containing the same text within them. In most cases, these are paid reviews left by people who have never used your app and may be paid for leaving poor feedback by your competitors.

When your reviews are removed by Google Play, Google Play may think its as fake when:

• Google removes untrustworthy reviews, also known as fake reviews - so if Big Brother suspects you, you get reviews from incentivized users or you buy them - cheating will be removed.
• Google removes undeserved reviews from apps - for example, if your app has a lot of crushes, bugs and internal issues, then good reviews won't be superimposed on it - it's decided by Google Play.
• Google continues to calculate - this means that your average (sum of ratings/number of reviews) is saved by the server and cannot be increased quickly. For example, if your average today is 3.8 - it can't be 4.5 tomorrow, so your reviews may be deleted.
• Google removes reviews from Tier 3 countries and low Android devices - so if your primary review source is a single country and your app users are still using Android 4.0, then it may be suspicious to Play Store.

App reviews retention solution: how to keep your android reviews?

Not every app user will review your app! This means, for example, that if you have 1000 app installs per day and get 1000 app reviews from these brand new users ...... Now you can stop it, because this is incredible! If you're a developer - you know what I'm talking about and you know how hard it is to get your users to review your app. So even 1 review out of 50 installs can be called a miracle. Google knows ...... So if you want to stop losing your reviews - you need to think about your review and install rates.

Install and reviews ratio

For new Playstore apps, a good rate is one (1) review per 50-100 app installs. So, if you are new to the marketplace and you have 50 installs per week - that means only one review per week is organic! Also, if you are an established app with 10.000 total installs - you can consider the 1:20 ratio a little easier - one review from 20 brand new installs. So, keep the install base high - this is the basis for not dropping app reviews.

User experience

The most important thing to get no-drop reviews is not space coming up: always consider your users. Yes, we mean that your app needs to be tested before launching and you should answer every negative comment about it, besides - you have to take actions to improve your app and user experience. For example, if someone tells you that the app doesn't work properly in Luxembourg - you need to find out the "why" and terminate the error, which will make your users feel bad.

Source of reviews

Also, the most shocking reason for the drop - the source of the comments, always called geo, where the comments come from. Getting reviews from India is normal, even great, but when your app is not localized for Indian users, it's suspicious! So when you start getting reviews - just put yourself in the position of the user: why would you be given 5 stars when you don't care about the user? So if your app is localized for the US only (don't miss "available") - try to get reviews from the US only, or adjust your app language and in-app purchases for other countries/niches.

Here are the rules based on our experience to have sticky reviews.

• Always keep an eye on the review to install ratio - 1:50 for new apps and 1:20 for mature apps.
• Receive organic android reviews from your users and answer them.
• Monitor your app, test it and improve it - don't let even small bugs meet your users.
• Localize your app - translate it into the user's language, adapt in-app purchases to the user's currency.
• Don't rush - your ratings can't jump from an average of 3.8 to 5.0 in a day with organic reviews.

How to leverage App Reviews for higher conversion rates?

Monitoring your app reviews is critical to your success. Think of your app listings as your store window: you need to make sure all the best reviews are at the top to entice potential customers (or users) to download your app. App reviews and ratings are vital to your app's success in the Google Play and App Store. People use app reviews and ratings to decide whether they should or should not download an app. 

The Google Play and Apple Store algorithms think in this way. Getting a steady flow of positive reviews and 4~5 ratings needs to be a big part of your App Store Optimization plan. You'll rank higher, increase app store impressions, and convince more people to download your app. 

You can visit "How to Use App Reviews and Ratings to Your Advantage" to know how to optimize app reviews and ratings. And you also think about buying app reviews and ratings to level up your user experience on Google Play store.