A rating system is used to inform other users whether a product or service is good or bad, but they can also be used for less than honorable purposes. Over the past few months there have been conversations concerning the Google Play store rating system and how some users are manipulating overall scores. Generally you need to install the app in order to leave a review but some developers are claiming trolls are creating fake accounts to purposely leave 1 star reviews. Now this is entirely possible by logging in and out of a device with multiple Google accounts and download the app for each account.

I am really sad to ask for your help for this, but I am really tired. The story: from some time every couple of days my free navbar for RRO/Layers “Trip navbar” is getting fake 1 star reviews almost every couple of days. Who said that it broke his phone, who that is a virus etc..Yesterday evening I received almost about other new 10 fake reviews from fake accounts created only to review my app. (they have fake names and only reviewed my app, nothing else). Names like “Tripnavbar sucks”.. I don’t know who is the responsible but I’m really tired because this situation is going over from some time.

As you can see seemingly good rated apps one day have taken a quick turn to a poor rating and the accounts leaving the poor ratings are suspicious to say the least.

What the hell is happening here suddenly? The reviews were good until last week, this week all reviews are bad and I didn’t upload an update since 2 weeks.

Policing a rating system isn’t the easiest thing to do either. Google does give users the ability to report reviews and ratings as spam or mark them as helpful or unhelpful. But more often than not, users just aren’t rating or reporting other users and the bad troll ratings end up prevailing. How this all can be resolved is up for discussion and the purpose of this article is to perhaps get that discussion in front of the eyes of Google and the Google Play store staff.

What do you think of the Google Play store rating system? Is it fair? Why? Is it not fair? Why not? What can or should be done? How can developers get Google’s attention? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and feel free to share this article and tag Google on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.