(Dis)Honesty of Google Play Store ratings

[dr4sight]

I have to imagine that you've noticed this. You're shopping for an app and see that it's averaging 4 or more stars so you get a bit excited that it's a good one. But if you look further and read the last 10 to 20 reviews you see it getting very low grades and a wealth of criticisms.
Here's an example and it may not be a good one.
The DirecTV app for phones shows with 4.1 stars as its "average".
Looking at the most recent 20 reviews and adding up the stars you come to exactly 40 which means to that group it is no better than a 2 star app.

The reason this is not an excellent example is that some people are busy attacking the DirecTV they're using for TV reception rather than the app. But I've seen similar things with other apps.

Other than trial and error is there any way to get an honest accounting of how good the app is NOW? How many times have we read, "This app was great and now it sucks after the last update"?

 

[El Presidente]

Head to the app page, tap the score and you should see "Most Helpful First" & "Options".

Tap either of those and you can sort by review date and filter by latest version only.

 

[mikedt]

Other than trial and error is there any way to get an honest accounting of how good the app is NOW? How many times have we read, "This app was great and now it sucks after the last update"?

Often that does happen, see it frequently, where an update has broken or changed something for the worse on an otherwise good app, e.g. now does repeated obnoxious in your face full screen ads, when it used to just do banner ads that didn't interfere with an app or game's functioning.

 

[UncleMike]

Filtering is the best you can do right now, but I'd like to have the option of looking at a bar graph, where each bar represents ratings received for successive versions of the app. Not only could you see how it is now, but how it's changing over time. Of an app is steadily improving, that's a good sign; if its been on the decline, then you might want to pass on by.

 

[hiredgun]

I have found youtube to be very helpful in looking at an app. There are reviews on just about any app you can think of, and even if there is only one it still gives you an idea of how good it may or may not be.

 

[NQuateman]

Head to the app page, tap the score and you should see "Most Helpful First" & "Options".

This was a helpful tip for me. But, in my case, with a galaxy S3, I have to first tap the All Reviews button before those options become available.