Any new reviews you post on Google Play Store won’t be visible right away. Only after 24 hours of submission, it may be visible to the rest of the public. Google is undertaking this change to deal with intentional review bombing as a protest against any matter.
Usually, hundreds and thousands of people without being legit users of an app, rate it 1-star. This happens as a protest to any incident to which the app or any of its developing/marketing/sales team has an indirect connection. Often as a target of social media trends, several popular apps end up receiving mass negative reviews which lower their overall presence on the Play Store.
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While any incident may be wrong but down rating the app without being a user is also unethical. If it is a case of a negative review campaign against any app, that unjustified motive can be stopped through proper analysis of the reviews.
There is a twist in the policy change. It seems to be in favor of the app developers. While after posting a review public cannot see it, the app developers can see it and work on the feedback in case it is a genuine one.
A Wise Move Against Paid Reviews
There is another aspect to this delay in the publishing of reviews on the Play Store app. If the app developer or its marketing team is trying to engage in paid reviews to push their products, Google can verify and take action on that as well.
Overall this move will resolve the long-standing issue of people taking out their frustration on apps with unjust motives. Also, the new Play Store policy will shun the general bad-mouthing comments through proper recon of the posted reviews. Let us hope that while the review analysis stops the review bombing and paid review campaigns it should not affect the genuine complaints and issues raised by rightful app users.
