Google unveils 24 hour delay to fight fake Play Store reviews

Tech giant Google has introduced a new change to help Android developers fight against fake app ratings & reviews on the Play Store. 

The company said that there will now be a 24 hour waiting period for new app reviews and ratings to be published publicly, so that both Google and developers can have more time to detect if they’re suspicious or not. Within this period, developers will be able to see new reviews and reply to them before they get published. 

“To allow us to automatically detect suspicious Ratings or Reviews activity, we are introducing a delay of around 24 hours from when users submit Ratings or Reviews to when those submissions are published. In this period, you will still be able to help your users by seeing Reviews and replying to them, but these won’t be immediately public,” Google said, as discovered by Mishaal Rahman. 

The new change could be an effective solution to the long-standing fake ratings & reviews problem the app stores have been facing for years. In 2021, the UK’s Competition and Market Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into Google and Amazon to find how sufficient they handle fake reviews. 

In June, Apple announced that it removed 94 million reviews and 170 million ratings before publication, and 610,000 reviews after publication in 2021 alone. The iPhone-maker also removed 250 million ratings & reviews in 2020.