We may all lament the state of app discoverability in the Play Store at times (it still sucks you can't do advanced searching), but at least Google is trying to improve the experience. Today it's added eight new categories and renamed two others, meaning apps will be better sorted into the relevant category, which will hopefully result in users being able to find what they're looking for quicker and easier.

New Play Store categories: Art & Design

Auto & Vehicles

Beauty

Dating

Events

Food & Drink

House & Home

Parenting

Some of these are pretty interesting, such as Auto & Vehicles and Dating - both of these have seen massive uptake from developers and users in recent months, with apps like Uber, Lyft, Tinder, and OkCupid having over 200 million downloads between them. Alongside the big-name apps moving into the new categories, we should see smaller devs re-categorize their creations, hopefully generating more downloads for the independent developers, which is always a good thing.

The two renamed categories are 'Transportation' and 'Media & Video,' changing to 'Maps & Navigation' and 'Video Players & Editors.' In regards to the Transportation category getting a new name, I guess Google needed to differentiate between apps like the aforementioned Uber and Lyft, and apps to help you find your way around, like HERE Maps or TomTom navigation.

Google says in its blog post that these categories will be available within 60 days. It also provides details of how interested developers can move apps over to the new categories. While I'd like to see a revamp of how Google approaches promoting and advertising apps, at least it's trying. Baby steps, guys.