Protect from fake reviews on Google Play
I published my Android app to Google Play and everything was fine. I got about 5000 user reviews with an average 4.6 mark. But at some moment I started getting lowest mark with an insane speed. Several hundred 1 marks during 5 days. So my rating fell to 4.3. There were no complains from users, no comments, just a huge number of lowest marks. I suspect these were fake reviews. Probably paid by competitors. Is there any way to identify that? To prevent that? Does Google protect us from fake reviews in any way?
Answer
I think the best thing to do is contact Google and make them aware of the issue.
There is a contact form on the google play site
Its also worth checking that there's not a bug in your app that stops it from opening in certain phones/devices (which may or may not be your fault, could be firmware issues). But you'll generally see users select 1 star rather than writing reviews. Remember users are lazy :)
As @64BitsPerMinute suggested in his comment, there may be some frameworks that could help detect crashes. Have a look at ACRA, or for a more managed service have a look at HockeyKit with the HockeyApp plugin. These services allow you to get crash + stack reports from your users when thins go wrong. Even if the users don't report it back to you they can click one button and send instant crash results.