In the middle of last year, Google announced plans to make Google Play Store ratings more useful. The idea was to make them more specific, so segment reviews by country and device type. A year has passed since then, and now these plans have finally come true.

When we search for an app on Google Play since November 2021, we see personalized reviews by country or region. We will see the valuations later. depending on our devicelook at a mobile phone, a tablet, a Chromebook, or a smartwatch.

Tablet and cell phone are not the same thing

Until last year, when we saw an app get an average of 4.5 stars, what we really see is country, device, language, etc. This is (relatively) useful to get an idea of ​​the overall experience of the app, but it can be misleading.

Example of personalized assessment by device type.

Why? Why? Just because an app works great on mobile phones doesn’t mean it works well on tablet too. Also, just because an app is useful in France or Germany doesn’t necessarily mean it’s useful in Spain. Targeting by region and device means that reviews are more loyal and better reflect the experience the user can expect.

Message posted to Google Play console notifying changes.

With the new changes implemented from September 12, 2022, if an app has a five-star rating on mobile and a three-star rating on tablet, We will see one or the other depending on how we visit your file from a mobile phone or tablet.. In the web version of Google, however, we will continue to see the absolute measure, for obvious reasons.

However, it should be noted that we will not see comments from users with the same smartphone. but overall a smartphone. They’re not that specific yet (and it would be a real hoot), but they’re at least a little more than they were a year ago.