In a blog post today, Google has revealed that it has made some changes in how the company's search and discovery algorithms work. Now things like performance problems, crashes, and overall jank are considered when ranking apps. This is great for consumers, as it encourages developers to pay closer attention to the quality of experience their products present. 

These changes are just the most recent in Google's attempts to improve developer attention to performance. A few months ago Google added a new set of Profilers to Android Studio. They allow developers to monitor a number of different metrics in search of increased optimization and efficiency. This was tied to new vitals tools in the Play Console Dashboard, too, that allows for developers to gather and view those same types of metrics from customers.

The new changes in Google Play's ranking should provide the necessary pressure for developers to actually use those tools. If an app doesn't perform well, it might suffer in promotion compared to better-performing apps. It might not make much of a difference in ranking for higher-profile companies with known performance problems, but smaller developers will have to pay a bit more attention now.

If you're a developer, it's probably a good idea to give the full (and short) blog post a read. It has some good links for how to best make use of Google's tools to avoid any penalties as a result of these changes.

Source: Google