Your Google Play Store reviews won't be visible right away anymore 

Play Store reviews are a valuable metric when you decide which app or game to get, but they aren’t perfect. All kinds of great apps can find themselves in the midst of review bombing campaigns, with users deciding to ruin reputations as a form of protest. Often, users will also take to the Play Store for one-star reviews when their problems could easily be resolved by the developer. To combat these kinds of issues, Google will now only post reviews after a 24 hour delay, which gives its algorithms and developers time to react.

As spotted by Mishaal Rahman, the new policy is as straightforward as it gets. App reviews are usually only posted within 24 hours after being created, though the time frame isn’t firmly written in stone — it could be a little more or a little less. While new reviews will be invisible to the public, developers will still be able to see them. This allows them to respond to them and work out potential problems users are facing before the review is publicly visible.

Google additionally says that the new policy will help it better detect “suspicious” ratings. We presume that this means that this means that the company is using the time frame to gauge if a review bombing campaign is commencing, which could prevent unjustified bad reviews from ever showing up publicly. The other side of the medal would probably involve bought reviews. While Google's rules don't permit developers to pay for positive reviews, there are numerous companies offering services like that. The delay in review processing could help Google detect these campaigns and stop them, as well.

The new delay could also take a lot of heat out of discussions. Review bombing often happens dynamically, with other users seeing that others share the same hate in the heat of the moment. When reviews only show up with a delay, dynamics like these could never come to be in the first place. It remains to be seen how the new policy will change the face of the Play Store and how it might make it a more civil place, but it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. This is also just one of many recent Google Play Store policy changes — the company is in the process of revising some of its rules.

( Details and picture courtesy from Source, the content is auto-generated from RSS feed.)

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