Four Steps to Supercharge Deep Linking for Android Apps
App
deep links are the new kid on the block in Search results, and they’re picking up
speed faster than you can say “Schema.org ViewAction”! For signed-in users, 15% of Google
searches on Android now return deep links to apps through App Indexing. And over just the past
quarter, we've seen the number of clicks on app deep links jump by 10x.
Based on feedback from developers since we
launched
publicly App Indexing back in June, we’d like to share with you four key steps to
monitor app performance and drive user engagement:
1. Make sure you get access to Webmaster Tools
App indexing is a team effort between you (as an app developer) and your website
management team. We recommend working with your webmaster to get access to
Webmaster
Tools to carefully track app-related issues. Here’s what’s available right now:
- Errors in indexed pages within apps
- Weekly clicks and impressions from app deep link via Google search
- Stats on your sitemap (if that’s how you implemented the app deep
links)
...and we plan to add a lot more in the coming months!
Any verified site owner can
add
a new user. Pick restricted or full permissions, depending on the
level
of access you’d like.
2. Understand how your app is doing in search results
How are users engaging with your app from search results? We’ve introduced two new
ways for you to track performance for your app deep links:
- We now send a weekly clicks and impressions update to the Message
center in your Webmaster Tools account.
- You can now track how much traffic app deep links drive to your app using referrer
information - specifically, the referrer extra in the
ACTION_VIEW
intent. We're working to integrate this information with Google Analytics for even easier
access. Learn how to track referrer
information on our Developer site.
3. Make sure key app resources can be crawled
Blocked resources are one of the top reasons for the “content mismatch” errors you
see in Webmaster Tools’
Crawl
Error report. We need access to all the resources necessary to render your app page.
This allows us to assess whether your associated web page has the same content as your app
page.
To help you find and fix these issues, we’ll now show you the specific resources we
can’t access that are critical for rendering your app page. If you see a content mismatch
error for your app, look out for the list of blocked resources in “Step 5” of the details
dialog:
4. Watch out for Android App errors
To help you identify errors when indexing your app, we’ll send you messages for all
app errors we detect, and will also display most of them in the “Android apps” tab of the
Crawl errors report.
In addition to the currently available “Content mismatch” and “Intent URI not
supported” error alerts, we’re introducing three new error types:
- APK not found: we can’t find the package corresponding
to the app
- No first-click
free: the link to your app does not lead directly to the content, but
requires login to access
- Back button violation: after following the link to your app, the
back button did not return to Search results.
In our experience, the majority of errors are usually caused by a general setting in
your app (e.g. a blocked resource, or a region picker that pops up when the user tries to open
the app from Search results). Taking care of that generally resolves it for all involved URIs.
Be sure to visit our
codelab
to learn how to get your Android app indexed by Google Search. As always, if you have
questions, feel free to drop by
Stack
Overflow or the
Webmaster help forum.
Posted by Mariya Moeva, Webmaster Trends
Analyst
