Google Play Title Counter

For years Android developers stuffed 50-character titles with keyword tails like “— Free Photo Editor & Collage Maker 2021”. Google ended that in 2021: titles shrank to 30 characters, and a new metadata policy prohibited price and promo language, ranking claims, calls to action like “download now”, emoji, and all-caps styling in the title, icon, and developer name. Apps that ignored it saw titles suppressed from featuring and, in repeat cases, listings removed.

The practical consequence is that Play and iOS titles now follow the same shape — “Brand: primary keyword” in 30 characters — but Play polices the wording harder. Apple mostly cares about relevance (guideline 2.3.7); Google additionally enforces a specific banned-word style guide, and its checks are automated enough to catch violations at submission time.

The title remains the heaviest-weighted keyword field in Play search, so the goal is a short brand plus your single most valuable search phrase: “Loop: Habit Tracker” beats “Loop” for discoverability and beats “Loop Habit Tracker Planner Routine” for policy safety and readability. Because Play (unlike Apple) also indexes your short and long descriptions, you do not need to cram secondary keywords into the title — they have somewhere else to live.

Localize the title per language rather than reusing English everywhere: Play supports separate store listings per locale, and a translated keyword in the title typically outranks the English equivalent in non-English markets. Just re-count each translation — German compounds and Cyrillic scripts eat the 30-character budget faster than English does.