Google wants to end fake Play Store reviews with this strategy

The Google team announced a change to the Play Store to end fake reviews on apps and games.

Reviews will no longer be published in real time, but will take a period of time before they are visible to everyone. We tell you what this change is about.

Google Play Store will no longer show reviews in real time

Fake reviews have become a big problem on the Google Play Store. Unknown or suspicious apps usually have dozens of reviews praising their dynamics or functions.

A strategy that usually works to capture the attention of users to install apps that do not do anything with what they promise, or worse, hide malware. The Google team wants to end this problem with a new update on the Play Store.

As communicated to the developers, reviews will no longer be published automatically when users write them:

In order to automatically detect suspicious activity related to ratings or reviews, we are going to introduce a delay of approximately 24 hours from the time users submit ratings or reviews until they are published.

So the Google team wants to take advantage of that period of time to detect any suspicious details in the ratings of apps or games. Of course, that time only applies to posting the review to be visible to all users, but does not include developers.

Developers will continue to receive reviews in real time and will be able to assist users if they report any issues with their app or game. While it can be a handy system to keep a closer eye on any fraudulent review activity, it leaves users in the dark in certain situations. For example, when the app suddenly has problems or if an update is causing problems.

When we have these problems, we often resort to app reviews to find out if we are the only ones affected. But with the new system we will see these reports several hours late.