If they were looking at existing listings too, it’d be a great move. Enforcing stricter rules on new listings than the older listings had just leaves us in a position where older listings get to cheat the algorithms and sit above the new though, which is a frustration. Hopefully a temporary problem.
downloading it now. 
I like it. I don’t see how to get to the leaderboards. Also how are you monetizing this?
Thanks.
There are adverts, but they don’t appear until after level 5 (I may shorten that…), and the ad network hasn’t yet reviewed the integration so they probably aren’t showing for anybody at all yet…
The leaderboards use the Google Play Games Service so you can get to them through the Play Games app. I considered integrating them more into the game itself but it seemed a bit overkill and I’ve not seen other games doing so yet.
Welcome to the tumbleweed (of installs) all new games face these days…
I’m a bit baffled as to why this isn’t yet showing in the app store actually. It’s not just missing from the categories, but searching for its title doesn’t work either. I’m sure this only took an hour or so last time 
. Is this the norm now?
I still can’t get first for my actual app name! https://play.google.com/store/search?q=merge%20city&c=apps
Hey, Richard!
I am sorry to tell you this, but you committed one cardinal sin of (mobile) game development. You didn’t do your research.
We could talk about app store SEO also, but seems like you haven’t performed any yet. Now, the reason why research is so important is because a quick google search for “Lights Out” reveals a movie by the same name, which, at least for me, takes the first one and a half pages of results. The following results are for some restaurants/poetry/bars/music/etc.
Googling for “Lights Out Google Play”, i.e. trying to go directly after the store where the app is, yields the same movie again, followed by a few apps and then there are numerous articles concerning an app called “LightsOut” which was removed from the store for spreading malware.
Now, searching just within Google Play for “Lights Out”, there are again movies, music, audiobook, ebooks and apps with either the exact same name or some variation of “Lights Out”. Searching just for apps, I found your app ranking as the 148th.
Loooong story short, “Lights Out” is a highly competed title and it has its negative associations. I would recommend trying to catch users via some alternative keywords because the title is close to a lost cause.
@SGS, ASO affects individual users differently. For me, Merge City is the #1 result for that search.
I can only see second place (even in incognito)
XeduR @Spyric,
Thanks, that’s actually very insightful. I knew there were a tonne of competing titles, but I didn’t know about the removed app… I bet that’s factoring into things quite massively 
.
We haven’t done any SEO yet, no. We were waiting to see where it sits organically first. Interesting that you’re seeing it in #148… It’s not listed at all for me!
SGS,
I shouldn’t laugh, but that’s amazing. Your app is 2nd for me despite the clear match. Considering the number of installs you’ve had and the fact Google are presumably making good money from your IAP’s you’d think it’d be at the top. There’s definitely no hope for me then!
Incognito doesn’t do anything for SEO. Incognito just means that your browser wont keep a record of where you visit for you, but Google (assuming you are on Chrome) and all of the sites that you visit can (and will) still track and identify you.
That is why apple stopped supporting incognito on Safari. People will still track you. It was only a suggestion.
Incognito absolutely makes a difference. You get a different view of the play store if you are not logged into your account.
For example, I do not see my apps in the lists on normal Chrome but I do in incognito mode.
Incognito doesn’t use the same cache storage so is handy for testing websites when you’re making changes to files that get cached aggressively.
Incognito also doesn’t use the same cookie storage so is handy for testing unpersonalised views without actually logging out and clearing data.
Both the above make it handy for checking things like the app store. Sure they’ll still hold data server-side and use that for personalisation - IP / geolocation based filtering and whatnot - but not to the same degree as if you’re logged in and accessing local cache.
For Google itself, adding &pws=0 to the URL can be helpful too. It tells Google that you don’t want personalised results. That combined with incognito mode is a handy way to test your rankings more accurately. Again they’ll still do geolocation etc based filtering, but nothing too deep.
We may be talking about different things here.
All incognito mode does is ignore your usual browser settings as well as keep your browsing history and cache web pages, images & cookies for your current session only. Incognito mode is really just meant as a way to hide where you surf from other people who use the same computer and browser. Any site with the desire and halfway decent analytics/tracking, can still identify and track you regardless of incognito mode.
You’ll see different results because the normal cookies aren’t loaded and you aren’t logged in. For SEO itself, however, incognito mode doesn’t make a difference.
Edit: seems like Richard also just posted as I was writing this. Well, double the walls of text! 
Only devs use incognito mode for testing! 99.9% just use it for porn.
Ironically, incognito is less useful from an actual privacy perspective 
For the record, we’ve started optimising keywords now and voila, it’s starting to show up in some results. I guess there wasn’t an issue after all.
Tried this one, really nice game
Thanks 
For anybody interested, it’s now 20th for me in the app store, for a search of “lights out”. I’m surprised we’ve managed to get it that high actually, as the other listings are really obviously keyword bombing their descriptions and attempting to do anything even remotely similar with ours just results in a rejected edit. Seems Google are really cracking down on what you can get away with writing, which is frustrating as you now can’t compete with listings that were written pre-crackdown .
Yep Google is definitely taking a more proactive approach than in previous years. Personally, I wish this was more intensive.
The store is flooded with asset flips/cones/sub-par games/etc.
Any listing not updated in the past year should be culled. Anything with under a 4 star rating should probably go too. I could go on but will stop for now