What happens when I unpublish an app from the Google Play market?
When I unpublish an app, what happens then?
I've an app, which is relying on third party data, which stopped working now. After quick review I realized, that update will take me a few weeks. To avoid bad ratings (which I started to receive today), I would like to temporarily unpublish my app for example for 3-4 weeks, and then republish it. I don't wanna change package name, or anything else, just unpublish and after few weeks republish it, so I'll keep my comments and ratings.
1) When I unpublish app, can users find my app by market SEARCH?
2) When I unpublish app, can users find my app by clicking on your DEVELOPERS PROFILE?
3) When I unpublish app, can I publish same app with same package name later with keeping my old ratings and comments?
Answer
if app is unpublished then is will not be available for download, will not appear in in-store search results, and simply cannot be installed from store. No details information from Google Play can be received even with direct URL to the application. Unpublishing however does not affect existing installations (so apps will not be automatically removed from any device that got it installed already). Also existing users still would be able to update if they are on older version.
And you cannot have another application with the same package name, no matter what.
EDIT
Please note that you unpublish (and this means just what name says, nothing more) not just APK - you hide all related stuff (app's page in Google Play etc). To end user it looks like the app is gone. For you - it is still in your console, you can edit description, images, see comments, stats or update APKs etc., but unless you publish it again, nobody will see these changes.