Forum Thread: How to Promote Your App Basics - Increasing Daily Downloads and Exposure

This tutorial is for all those who are new developers in the android market that want some extra downloads for their application, this is a simple trick you can use to take full advantage of the Google Play Store's algorithm.

The Trick

I like sure-shot easy tricks that result in guaranteed extra downloads per day. The whole purpose of ASO and App Promotion is to give your app exposure and a chance at the "right" market, but who gets to decide what the right market is? My solution/approach to get more exposure is a very democratic one, let the people choose what the right market for you is.

This works for small or big established apps in the store, the change in the downloads per day would be determined by the total of organic downloads you get per day, following is a little break down about the download counts and what you can expect from this.

IF you have;

Total Installs Per Day : >50
Total Uninstalls Per Day : <30

What you will get extra (per each translation);

Installs per day : +9

This is a very underrated and commonly overlooked feature of the Google Play Dev Console.

The Translations.

This feature was supposed to help diversify Google Play's reach and make it more accessible to all languages, this would also increase their market share by alot (since android has the cheapest devices available).

Anyhow, this feature's algorithm is pretty easy to manipulate if you play it just right.

The first thing you need to make sure is that you are infact ranking for atleast one keyword at the playstore or have organic downloads that the playstore has determined you deserve. The next step is the easiest one.

First of all, go to the store listing page, and under the Manage Translations option there's a feature called "Add Translation".

Second, you will need to know WHICH language to target, they made this part a little too simple, just go to your main stats overview page and at the bottom of that page you'll find this nifty little area that tells you about the language breakdown and the language based market share for the category that your app is listed under, pick 3 random languages that you haven't touched yet.

Copy your original store listing and head on down to : https://translate.google.com/

(This part is really important, don't translate your listing from anywhere else BUT google's translate page – explained later)

Translate everything, including your App name and short description and submit it in without any customized screenshots, etc.

(Screenshots aren't sort-able or easy to define in a ranking algorithm)

Why This Works.

It's the same way SEO works. if you go to the brazillian or russian play store (below are the links) and search for something in ENGLISH rather than the local language, you'll still get results, this is because of a thing called reference sort , this is used by google to assume what you are trying to search. Yea, google is just a big assumption engine, no machine or human made code is smart enough to just know what you want, it's all about having very specific assumptions, like rich people love apple products and justin bieber fans are usually pre pubescent. Just like every other man made thing, this algorithm has loop holes that you can use for your advantage.

Below are a few of many google play language formats, go to each version and search the same thing on each in English, you'll find the same thing in each platform.

https://play.google.com/store?hl=pt-br
https://play.google.com/store?hl=fr-fr
https://play.google.com/store?hl=de-de
https://play.google.com/store?hl=es-es
https://play.google.com/store?hl=da-dk

Now, let's say that your main keyword is "funny pics" – This keyword isn't pronounced the same in every language mentioned above so even though you may rank pretty high on English platforms, you may not be visible here and since the translated-app market is so new, you won't find much competition to beat, get in fast and stay on top, that's how google play works….

In the End..

Doing this I've also seen a significant rise in my English keywords, I wasn't expecting it but it does make sense, since google uses these keywords as reference towards a user's intentions, having several formats of "funny pics" point towards one app is going to eventually get you some points for the main English keyword. This is all beside the review/download rate change, as we already know that good or bad reviews do affect keyword rankings, my experiment was an isolated one from such events ruining the value of the technique being used.

This trick to get more exposure is alot like making auto-blogging websites to get backlinks for your main website. Google is doomed to be spammed, they've always used the same methodology while setting up new platforms. This trick will be used and abused by Q4 2016, you can be sure of that.