Google play store campaign tracking doesnt work with web browser install

Question

We have a Play Store button on our landing page which has a link tagged with all the required UTM parameters to track installs from the Play Store. So if a visitor clicks on the Play Store button (using a web browser) goes to the web version of the Play Store and installs to his device from there, we should be able to track that install as coming from the web version of our landing page.

However, our data looks sketchy. Tracking less installs than we actually see on Mixpanel. And then we found this article It says: "Again, attributing installs based on the install referrer using direct links to Google Play does not work if a user chooses to open the measurement URL with a web browser (instead of the Google Play Store app)."

Anybody knows if this is correct? And if yes, what's a comprehensive way to track Play Store installs (source, medium etc)

Answer 1

Yes, this is correct - your app won't get tracking params if your user does not open the Google Play Store app.

If you want to track user's installation source, try some 3rd-party solutions, like Branch.io (free) or Flurry (well, at least Flurry used to do that and used to be free, not sure about now) for example.

Basically, the way they work is that they collect so-called fingerprint of the user (IP, browser, time of the click, device info etc) and then compare it with the data that their SDK sends from within your app (after the user has successfully installed and launched it).

I'm not trying to promote any of those solutions, we are just happen to be using Branch on our production app and it works quite well for us.

Also, you can try to set those link to target market:// links instead of http links (this one would force the Play Store app to open), but I would not recommend that solution as it could cause problems with people who have Google Play Services missing.

market:// links look like these one:

market://details?id=your.package&referrer=utm_stuff...

EDIT: If you want to keep all your data in one place (let's say, Analytics) - you could pass those utm tracking params into your Branch links and collect/send them manually to Google Analytics (and Play Store - they are connected) using CampaignTrackingReceiver class