Don’t you find it annoying that searching for apps on the Play Store can be sometimes frustrating? The app you’re looking for won’t always come up on top of search results, you’d think Google should have known better. And if you’re a developer, it can also be frustrating because you know your app is great but people can’t find it. App Indexing is trying to change all that by improving on app indexing so more people can find and discover how cool your app is.
Google recently shared that they now have over 30 billion links within apps indexed. This means people doing a Google search can also see a relevant app if not installed on their Android device yet. Google search done on an Android tablet or phone will show content from your app if related to a search query. So if someone is searching for “diet plan” or “running tips”, health and fitness related apps will show up on search results. App install buttons will be shown if you haven’t installed an app yet.
If you’re an app developer, you must implement App Indexing first before people can see your app on the search results. People will see on the results page app install buttons if related to their search. Clicking on the buttons will bring them to your Google Play Store page.
App Indexing is Google’s way to rank Android apps and as a ranking signal for all Android users. This will mostly benefit the app developers because more people can find their apps and more new users can be acquired.
Speaking of search results, Google has also made some changes on the presentation of URLs in search results. Algorithms that display URLs in the results have been updated. Instead of just showing the domain name and the exact URL of a website, Google will now show the name of the website. This way, people can easily identify if a page is relevant or not or what is it about as seen on mobile search results
SOURCE: Google
