Application Randomly Disappeared from Google Play Store Search

Question

My app, "(Adult) Never Have I Ever" disappeared from Google Play Search out of nowhere. When I would search my app by keywords in Google Play, "Never Have I Ever", I was ranked 3rd for my adult version of the app, and 5th for the kids version of the app. However a couple days ago, the adult version disappeared from the search results. It is nowhere to be found, unless I type in my developer name or the entire app name. I get most of my installs organically, so now people cannot find my app by simply typing, "Never Have I Ever".

I do not understand how my app went from ranked 3rd to missing from all of the search results when I type, "Never Have I Ever."

Bottom line, "(Kids) Never Have I Ever" is showing in the results, while "(Adult) Never Have I Ever" is missing. Both have almost equal amounts of installs and active users at this, current time. This cannot be a compatibility issue since the kids & adult apps are identical, except for the word lists that I use.

---

After getting in contact with the Google team, I have gotten no official answer for the problem, but my app randomly reappeared in the Google Play Store. I was told that the problem was due to my app being rated Mature, so my app is toward the bottom. Then I was told it might be do to my app content, and manifest file. However, my kids and adult apps are identical. Also, Google's algorithm hasn't changed without notice, so my app shouldn't have been removed from the returned search list. Additionally, I was not provided with any concrete solution or answers. It could have just been a glitch or some other server related problem.

---

EDIT: October 12, 2016

I changed the name of the apps to Never Have I Ever (Kids) & Never Have I Ever (Adults).

My app is disappearing about every week for roughly 3 days or so. This only affects the adults version of the app, not the kids. You can check the screenshots at my website link below.

http://www.jamesloboda.com/NHIE-problem.html

---

EDIT: December 22, 2016

I can now speak from experience that this issue is something that happens to multiple of my apps. I did some investigation work, and tracked apps of other developers over time. It turns out that their apps go missing from search results also.

The conclusion is this: Google has implemented a certain algorithm that dictates what search results appear. As in, it does not matter if your app name is searched, that app name may never show up in the search results.

The downside is that your app may not show up in the search results. However, if your developer account has multiple apps, then your other apps may appear in the search results for the opposite app.

For example: if I search "Never Have I Ever" I may see my Would You Rather app, but not see the Never Have I Ever app anywhere.

Answer 1

Often and Often I hear this problem... We have dating app it is also adult, we reached 1 300 000+ downloads in one year.

Few months our app installs started to drop, it dropped to 1700+ in the day. So we made new screes, new feature, added 7-10 tab inch screens. We had in the description this like: From now our app is completely free! So we just deleted this line and lost 5 main keywords. But our app installs raised to 7-10k in the day, we did not care about that, because app started to rank superb. In 2 months we got 300+k installs.

So Google made 2017 May new algorithm update. The first day our daily installs dropped to 3500, next day 683. and it goes like this, we dar 350+ stalls after 2 weeks of launching the app...

In one years this is our bottom in installs. This what we get now everyday... So we contact google about this, explains everything, they tried to say like all the time, read ASO book or something. Somehow we managed to get their attention and they wrote us email asking when we lost ranks? So we again explained everything and got again email explaining, that with our app is everything fine, that in google play works full team to maintain it and this is everything fine.

Ou and they say, there is big competition in our niche, there are tons of new apps added every day. So how this can be possible, new apps over ranks old ones? So then their algorithm sucks. We can bet that if we launched the new app again, we got back ur rankings fast, it is ridiculous, but it is true...

Problem is that a lot of new apps coming, they people are buying fake reviews. we know 5 months old app, that has 1 million downloads and 28k reviews, from them, 2k 1 star and 18k 5 stars, there is no possibility to get 30k reviews in one million...

So we tried to add new ASO, but it didn't help, we are now in big problems and don`t know how to fix it, the app basically won't rank to our chosen keywords...