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Many have noticed a drop in Active User Installs in their Google Play Developers Console.

Drop in Active User Installs Starting May 13th in the Google Play Developer Console?

Many have noticed a drop in Active User Installs in their Google Play Developers Console.
Noticed a drop in Active Users in your Google Play Console too?

Why are Active User Installs Dropping in the Google Play Developers Console!?

Edit: Oops, clearly it was May 13th.

Two days ago I opened the Google Play Developer Console to utter shock. My app, Saving Made Simple, is by no means a runaway hit, though Active User Installs were progressing nicely until the morning of May 13th. I had to refresh the screen three times to accept what I saw: a 250 user drop in my Active User base, man…

Immediately I searched Google for “Active User Install bug“, “Active User Drop Google Play“, “Active User Algorithm Change“, etc. etc. though I could find no other accounts online. Today I performed the same searches and I came across two other users reporting the exact odd behavior I had noticed: even though my installs were greater than my uninstalls, my Active User Installs were decreasing. Simply put, Active Users are roughly calculated as the users who install your app and keep it installed, so subtracting uninstalls per day from installs per day gives you a good idea of the Active User gain or loss per day. Additionally, I’d never lost Active Users before, so this was quite strange.

Fortunately if multiple people are reporting this there’s a chance it could simply be a reporting bug in the Google Play Developer Console, certainly I hope this is the case. Unfortunately though this could also imply that Google has changed it’s algorithm to measure Active Users and it’s now adjusting to the real number of Active Users it sees.

Whatever the case is, you’re not alone in the mysterious case of Active User Installs dropping in the Google Play Developer Console!

Best of luck to your developments!

3 Comments

  1. yeah!.I noticed the same strange dropdown since two days ago with all of my 8 apps. My 70k active user installs app experienced almost 800 install drops for a single day !

  2. It is back again, but i notice that the active device installs increase significantly these 2 days than ever before….

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