1
Download the reviews
In Play Console, open Download reports → Reviews, pick your app and a month. Each month is its own CSV file, and Play Console also keeps them in a Cloud Storage bucket if you would rather copy a whole year at once.
Google Play reviews
Analyze Google Play reviews, quote by quote
Play Console shows you the stars. The reasons are in the review text, one review at a time. Upload the reviews export and RawQuotes names what people keep writing about, with the exact reviews under every insight.
The same three complaints, written two hundred ways
One person says reminders come late. Another says they never fire with the phone locked. A third gives one star and writes “broken since update”. Reading every review each month takes an afternoon, and skimming gets you the loudest one, not the most common one.
From Play Console to insights in three steps
2
Upload the file
The Google Play preset recognises the file by four of its columns. Google writes these reports in UTF-16 rather than UTF-8, and RawQuotes reads that encoding from the mark at the start of the file.
Example data
3
Read what repeats
Each review under an insight is quoted in full, as one line: Google strips the line breaks from Review Text when it writes the report.
What the Google Play preset reads
The export is recognised by its column names. Two columns are used; the rest is left out.
| Column in the export | What RawQuotes does with it |
|---|---|
Review Text | The text insights are counted from and quoted word for word. |
Review Submit Date and Time | The date. It decides which week and month the item is counted in. |
Package Name, Star Rating | Only used to recognise the export. |
| Every other column | Left out, including the review title, device, app version and your replies. |
A review with only a star rating has an empty Review Text cell and is skipped: there is nothing to quote. Google writes Review Submit Date and Time in UTC, so a review is counted in the month it was submitted.
What a month of Play reviews turns into
A short list of sentences, each naming something reviewers keep writing about, with the number of reviews behind it. Open one and you read those reviews word for word, each with its date, so a complaint that began after one update shows in the dates.
From here on, every source works the same. All sources in a project feed one set of insights, and each insight shows how many items came from each one. The list under an insight is exactly as long as its count, a month can be compared with the one before, and only the insight’s name and description are written by the model, labelled as generated. How the analysis works
Example data
Fewer than ten reviews with text: a count, not an insight
Only a review with text counts as a complete response; a bare star rating never gets that far. Below ten in a period, across every source in the project, RawQuotes names nothing and shows how many reviews you have, how many are missing, and a link to read them.
Example data
Questions about Google Play reviews
Does RawQuotes connect to Play Console?
No. You download the reviews CSV yourself and upload it, so RawQuotes never signs in to your developer account.
Is the star rating used?
No. Star Rating only helps recognise the export. What is read is Review Text and the date it was submitted.
Is the review title read?
No. Review Title is left out, so a title is never quoted and never counted. Only the text of the review becomes an item.
Can I import last year’s reviews?
Yes, one monthly file at a time. Each review keeps its submit date, so it lands in the month it was written. A month that was already counted takes the new reviews in when you recompute it (Basic and Pro).
Start with last month’s reviews file.
Free includes file import. No card required.