Experienced ASO and SEO specialists may wonder if reviews in app stores contribute to better indexing of an application. When a user shares their thoughts in a review, they may inadvertently include relevant keywords in their comments, which can benefit the app's indexing. Furthermore, developers can also contribute to this process by including keywords in their responses to reviews.
However, the question remains: is it really that straightforward?
Do reviews on the App Store and Google Play actually have an impact on an app's indexing?
This is what we aimed to investigate.
We handpicked apps from Ukraine and used the following steps to carry out our experiment:
1. We chose relevant keywords for which the selected applications were not yet indexed.
2. We posted reviews in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian, and English.
3. We analyzed the applications' indexing by search terms.
4. We examined the impact of likes on improving review indexing.
5. We analyzed the indexing of featured reviews.We verified the indexing of responses to reviews in Google Play.
6. We verified the indexing of reviews in the App Store.
At the time we wrote the reviews and responses, the selected applications were not indexed for the chosen keywords. These keywords were not present in the Title, Short description, Full description, or Screenshots.
Therefore, except for the reviews, no other factors affected the indexing.
Checking indexing of Google Play reviews.
Keyword: Замовлення (Order)
Review posted on October 30th:
Indexing appeared on November 1st:
Position at the beginning of indexing was 59th and gradually increased.
The application had only 17 reviews, but just one review with the search term
was enough to get indexed.
Keyword: Красная шапочка (Little Red Riding Hood)
Review posted on November 2nd.
Indexing for this search term started on November 5th, but the position was
only 179th. The application had no reviews, but only one was enough for indexing.
Keyword 1: Чтение стихов (Reading Poetry)
Keyword 2: Стихи о природе (Poems About Nature)
Review posted on November 5th.
Indexing started on November 7th and 14th:
Positions at the beginning of indexing were 39th and 38th.
The app had 12 reviews, but just one with the keyword was enough
to get indexed.
Keyword 1: Скидки на кулинарию (Discounts on Cooking)
Keyword 2: Скидки на кулинарию и выпечку (Discounts on Cooking and Baking)
Review posted on October 29th.
Indexing started on November 8th:
Positions at the beginning of indexing were 13th and 33rd.
The application had 23,000 reviews, but just one was enough for indexing.
Keyword: file viewer
Review posted on November 26th.
Indexing appeared on the same day with review - November 26th:
Position at the beginning of indexing - 69.
The application had 8,000 reviews, but just one was enough for indexing.
Keyword: read to me
Review posted on November 26th.
Indexing appeared on November 30th:
Position at the beginning of indexing - 70.
The application had more than 3 million reviews, but just one was enough
for indexing.
Keyword: make your own card
Review posted on November 26th.
Indexing appeared on December 4th:
Position at the beginning of indexing - 61.
The application had 390 reviews, but just one was enough for indexing.
Keyword: organization of daily routine
Review posted on December 2nd.
Indexing appeared on December 7th:
Position at the beginning of indexing - 89.
The application had 2,000 reviews, and one was enough for indexing.
Keyword 1: metro cash & carry
Keyword 2: магазин игрушек (Toy Store)
The review was posted on December 17th.
Indexing appeared on the same day the review was posted - December 17th:
Position at the beginning of indexing - 32.
Indexing for the search term "магазин игрушек" (Toy store) appeared on December 26th.
Position at the beginning of indexing - 48.
The application had nearly 18,000 reviews, and one was enough for indexing.
Keyword 1: якитория (Yakitoria)
Keyword 2: Ikura
Keyword 3: роли (Rolls)
The review was posted on December 20th.
Indexing appeared on December 24th for the "Ikura" brand,
December 25th for the "якитория" brand,
and December 26th for the "роли" search term:
Positions at the beginning of indexing - 84, 99, and 96.
The app had 730 reviews, and indexing was obtained after placing one of the necessary search terms.
Keyword 1: Розетка (Rozetka)
Keyword 2: Цитрус (Citrus)
Keyword 3: Комфи (Comfy)
The review was posted on December 17th.
Indexing appeared on December 26th:
Positions at the beginning of indexing - 94, 70, and 31.
The application had 1,300 reviews, and one was enough for indexing.
Keyword: списати бонуси (debit the bonuses)
Response to review posted on November 30th:
Indexing began on December 7th:
Keyword: Western Union
Response to review posted on December 2nd:
Indexing started on December 7th:
We also checked the impact of likes on the review indexing to see if liked reviews would be indexed.
When we tried to increase the number of likes for two reviews with the same keyword, there was no indexing.
There was no indexing.
No indexing eith.
Some of the reviews we posted during the experiment were featured, but they were not indexed:
We also checked the indexing of previously featured reviews, but it didn't register anything for most of them.
As we know, a review on Google Play appears on the app's page only 24 hours after it was written. However, some of the reviews we received were indexed
on the same day they were posted, even though they were not yet visible
on the app's page. Therefore, we can conclude that it does not matter if
a review is a feature review or a regular review, or if it appears on the visible
part of the page or not because indexing starts before the review is visible.
We have checked a large number of reviews and applications, none of which received indexing.
Keyword 1: calls
Keyword 2: numbers
Reviews were posted on October 19th and 21st. No indexing:
Keyword 1: магазин техники (electronics store)
Keyword 2: супермаркеты (supermarkets)
Review was posted on November 13th and did not receive indexing:
Reviews on Google Play are indexed in different languages (we checked Ukrainian, Russian, and English).
Words begin indexing within 2-3 days. Rarely, it takes up to 10 days. In some cases, indexing started on the same day the review was posted.
In almost all cases, one review with a search term was sufficient to obtain indexing.
The platform uses its algorithms to choose the starting point for where the application will rank. As a result of the experiment, we were able to appear in the top 20 for certain search terms, but for others, we ranked as low as 150th or worse.
Reviews that can be indexed have an average length of 100 characters.
Our experiment showed that not all reviews on Google Play are indexed:
Out of 33 expanded reviews that we posted, 16 were indexed, which is a 48% indexing rate.
None of the 10 short reviews we posted (up to 5 words in length) were indexed, resulting in a 0% indexing rate.
We also posted 11 reviews with branded search terms and found that 6 of them were indexed, giving us a 55% indexing rate for this category of reviews.
During the experiment, we obtained indexing for 21 search terms, including:
SAP* from 5 to 10 - 12 search terms;
SAP* - 15 - 1 search term;
SAP* from 40 to 55 - 8 search terms.
(*SAP (Search Ads Popularity) - indicates the popularity of a search term from 5 to 99.)
Thus, the less popular the search term, the more chances of obtaining indexing for it. However, medium-frequency search terms are also indexed.
Indexing obtained as a result of posted reviews is preserved. It can disappear only if this search term is not entirely relevant to the selected application,
or if its position was very low (below 150th).
Featured reviews are indexed the same way as regular reviews:
in some cases, indexing exists, in others - it does not.
Increasing likes to reviews does not affect their indexing.
Responses to reviews on Google Play are also indexed.
Reviews in the App Store are not indexed.
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