Inspired by the comments of some other Android developers, I added a “rate this app” button to my slot machine game in the last version. The invitation to rate the app appears whenever the player earns an achievement medal and this seems to work well in terms of encouraging good ratings and comments.
I released the new version just under a week ago and so far 60,000 users have upgraded out of a total active install base of 175,000 users. The number of ratings of my game has doubled from about 400 to just over 800 and the average rating has risen from 3.9 to 4.2. That’s a fairly significant rise in my mind.
Unfortunately all these extra positive ratings don’t seem to be helping my app store ranking. Just before the new version was released my game was at 62 in the free cards and casino games category, now it has slipped down to 68. The only reason I can think of for this is that the new version seems to have prompted quite a lot of users to uninstall the app. The total active installs has dropped from 182,000 to 175,000 since releasing the new version which is a steeper decline than previously.This suggests to me that the percentage of active installs has a higher weighting than the number and quality of the app’s ratings when it comes to app store ranking.
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