Google developers discovered a strange new Play Store bug last month. Users’ search results did not show the recently published apps. This would prevent such apps from showing up when people searched for them even with exact names. The bug however, apparently did not affect apps that had already been on the Play Store shelves for a while.
The Play Store bug was first discovered by Android Authority. Later, many developers began noticing that their apps wouldn’t show up in search results. Weirdly, the apps would show up in search on replacing the spaces by underscores. So, if you were to search for Deliver The Duck, which is the exact name of the application, you would get no results. However, searching for Deliver_The_Duck would get the app in the very first result. The bug was clearly there. Whether it was present in the search code or the indexing code was still not clear.
Watch: Google Messages RCS: How to enable this on any Android smartphone
The Play Store bug is now fixed
Now, the Play Store bug is apparently being fixed, as discovered by XDA-developers. Developers began noticing that searching for newer apps has started showing appropriate results. There was still no official comment until today. However, we now have an official confirmation about the fix. Developers started saying that the issue was resolved on the thread where people had reported the issue. Now Google has marked the thread as ‘fixed’, confirming that the issue existed, and has now been completely fixed.
The issue likely originated after the Play Store went through a visual revamp in August. The redesign was meant to help users search for their apps easily and more efficiently. An exact reason for the issue arising in the first place is still unknown. Regardless, developers across the world whose new apps weren’t searchable, would welcome the fix.
