If you’re an Android developer and have your app/game listed on Google Play, you’re probably very familiar with the Google Play Console. That’s where you get the main stats of how your app’s performing. Some follow it religiously to see how their apps are performing and analyze what ASO tactics worked or not.
Anyway, one of the most important metric in there is knowing what the source of your store listing visitors is. The Google Play Console reports those traffic source values as 3 different sections:
  1. Google Play search. Users who accessed your store listing on Google Play by searching for your app’s name or associated brand and did not have it installed on any other device are considered as Google Play search visitors. However, this does not include visits from ads displayed on Google Play search results.
  2. Google Play explore. Google Play explore visitors are users who accessed your store listing on Google Play without searching for it and did not have it installed on any other device. This category includes users who clicked on search autocomplete suggestions, but not visits from ads on Google Play.
  3. Third-party referrals. Third-party referrals refer to users who accessed your store listing from sources outside of Google Play, and did not have the app installed on any other device. This category includes users who installed your app using the inline install overlay within an advertisement.
However, something changed starting with February 20, 2023 in the Google Play Console Metrics & Dimensions section. Basically Google Play Searches started dropping vertiginously, while Google Play Explore visits started increasing exponentially. And if you look at the graphs, it’s as if the 2 graphs were switched in between them.
If you’re wondering what happened don’t worry, it’s an intentional change done by Google:
Starting with February 20, 2023, categorical searches (for example, a search for ‘action games’) will be categorized as Google Play Explore traffic rather than Google Play Search traffic in Play Console reporting. Navigational searches (for example, searches for your app’s name or closely associated brand) will continue to be categorized as ‘search’ traffic. As a result, you may see a significant shift in traffic attribution from ‘search’ to ‘explore’. This won’t affect the total number of visits to your store listing that are reported.
This means that starting with February 20, 2023, you’ll see traffic being reported as Google Play Search only if a user searches for your app/game’s name or closely associated brand. All other searches will be categorized as Google Play Explore. I’m still trying to understand why they did this change, other than trying to keep devs even more in the dark on what searches led to their app store listing, but at least we have an official explanation. I bet some devs were scared when seeing almost all Google Play Search traffic gone, but that’s clear now.