The Ratings page counts every rating your app has received, whether they contain text or not. All of the other tools in Appbot only analyze Reviews that contain a text component. More information on the difference between Ratings and Reviews can be found here.
The results that you see on the Ratings page will therefore match the numbers you see on the iOS and Google Play stores.
For apps on both stores the ratings page is broken into two sections:
- Current Live App Store Stats and
- Ratings Over time (chart).
Current App Store Stats are updated regularly and matches the app store at the time of the last update. The time of the most recent update is shown at the top of the widget, marked in red below:
The Ratings Over Time chart below shows how the rating has changed over time. If the chart is blank for your app, please see the FAQs at the bottom of the page to determine the reason. The count at the top left of the chart (shown as 1 below) reflects the count of ratings this app received during the period selected in the filter pane on the right. You can use the drop-down menu shown as item 2 to display different views of the data. Use the Export button (item 3) to export ratings data to Excel or CSV.
Ratings for iOS apps
The App Store reports ratings for each country. By default, you’ll land on the country with the highest volume of Ratings when you land on this page. View data for all countries by opening the filter pane on the right (see 2 below) and clearing the Country filter.
The ‘Current Rating’ (see 1 below) matches the App Store, and reflects the rating since September 19, 2017 or whenever you last reset your Ratings via App Store Connect.
Here is Apple’s explanation:
You can also view the count and average stars of ratings for a specific period (see 3 below). Just open the filter pane (2 below) and adjust the date range to show the period you want.
Ratings for Google Play apps
We offer two types of Ratings for Google Play apps, Public and Private. You can see which one you’re viewing displayed as item 1 in the image below. Public ratings match the publicly accessible pages of the Google Play store – the pages a user would see. Private ratings match your Google Play Developer Console.
Public Ratings
Until November 2021 Google Play ratings were shown as global. Since November 2021 Google Play average star ratings are now displayed per country. Please note that the total ratings count is still global in both the Google Play Store and in Appbot, and only the average star rating is country-specific. You can see which country is selected in two places on the page, shown as item 2 below.
For Public Google Play ratings, the Ratings Over Time chart displayed global ratings until November 2021, when Google began a transition to per country ratings. The period is shown in grey marks the transitional period between global and per country ratings for Google Play apps and is subject to some unavoidable inaccuracies. Since Jan 2022 Appbot now accurately displays per country ratings, to reflect the per-country data now shown in the public Google Play store. See the image below:
Private Ratings
Private ratings are global and match what you see inside your Google Play Developer Console. If you have connected Appbot to your Google Play Developer Console we will show the Private ratings data by default.
More information on the differences between public and private ratings can be found here.
Ratings FAQ
What if your Ratings Over Time Chart is blank?
App stores don’t provide ratings per day, Appbot has to collect the data and calculate it for you. We fetch data for all the top charting apps, but for smaller apps we’ll only start fetching and calculating ratings over time when someone starts tracking that app in Appbot.
How long will it take to show data?
We need a minimum of 5 data points for the chart to start returning data, so please check back in 5 days.
Why doesn’t ratings have the entire history?
The App Stores don’t enable us to fetch history for ratings. We snapshot ratings once a day from when the app is first tracked in Appbot.
Why are there missing days?
As the stores don’t provide historical public ratings we snapshot ratings once per day. Due to timezones and technical issues there can occasionally be missing days and/or two results on a single day (eg 18 hours apart).
Because of the cost involved in sampling ratings, Appbot only samples for apps that are tracked by paid users.
If an app is untracked for a while there will be a corresponding gap.
Due to the nature of the sampling we are unable to backfill ratings.
Unfortunately this is out of our control.
Why are ratings cumulative?
This is the way the stores show them. We snapshot public ratings once per day and can’t guarantee exactly 24 hours between samples. Therefore, we can’t provide an exact figure in a 24 hour period.
Why do I see decreases in the Ratings Over Time Chart?
We sample the rating count you see on the iOS and Google Play app store pages.
The app stores calculate the rating count using proprietary algorithms that we have unfortunately do not have visibility into. This can cause fluctuations in the samples.
Another less common cause of decreases is reviews and ratings being removed.
This can be done at the request of the author or the app developer. Also sometimes the app stores do this if they detect spam reviews or ratings. Again, visibility into this is limited.
Why is the Country filter missing?
You may notice that the Country filter is missing for Google Play ratings when the Private tab is selected.
Google Play Private ratings do not include country data and so cannot be filtered by country.
Unfortunately, this is something imposed by Google and is out of our control.
If you select the “Public” tab you can filter by country. Be aware that this is a different dataset to “Private”.