Global App and Game Ratings Cross 14 Billion

I talk about ratings a lot in my Keyword Teardowns because they've become one of the most important components for getting discovered in the App Store and Google Play.

One thing I was very curious about, and the kind I don't get to see when analyzing keywords or apps, is the global volume of ratings. When I looked, I discovered the stores are getting close to hitting a new milestone.

I summed up all the ratings for every app and game across all countries, and that total is now 14.1 Billion. Yup, billion, with a B. That's almost double the world's population (according to Wikipedia).

70%, or 9.8B ratings, come from apps and games on Google Play. The remaining 30%, or 4.3B ratings, came from apps and games on the App Store. It's also worth noting that a little over 2B ratings belong to apps and games that are no longer in the store.

Bonus: the average rating is 4.09 on Google Play and 1.8 on the App Store. I didn't get these confused, I promise. I suspect the higher average on Google Play is a result of having many more apps that don't have a single rating, which I excluded from my calculation, vs. the App Store, where it's easier to get a few ratings and those bring the average down a lot.

Thanks to additions from both Apple and Google that enable developers to easily ask their users to provide a rating, I only see this total growing faster, stores relying on it more for discovery, and consumers relying on it more as a measure of popularity.

If you have an app or game out there, you'll need more ratings to stay competitive.