Some metrics on the Google add-on stores
Post date: Sep 28, 2016 4:53:21 PM
We recently released the 800th version of Yet Another Mail Merge and I was wondering if other add-ons were updated with the same frequency. So I started to collect data about every add-ons available and here are some metrics.
As of September 2016, there are 582 add-ons available, split between the 3 add-on stores (on Google Docs, Google Sheets & Google Forms). I did a previous count in July and there were 501 add-ons available. 4 have been deleted by their authors, 6 have been de-listed from the public gallery (eg. SurveyMonkey had a public add-on but now it seems only available if you have the link, you can't find it in the gallery) and 91 new add-ons have been published during the summer (that's about one new every day).
The current repartition is as follows: 340 add-ons for Sheets, 209 for Docs & 33 for Forms.
Are all those add-ons maintained by their creators?
The add-on store has been launched by Google in March 2014. 31 add-ons haven't been updated since the end of 2014 & 133 have received their last update in 2015. 44% of all add-ons have received an update in the last 3 months.
If we look at the number of versions / updates, more than 50% have received at least 20 updates since their publication and YAMM is only the second most updated add-on. Supermetrics is first, Form Publisher is third.
In this list, you'll find many add-ons that have been either successfully monetized or which found other ways to be financed (eg. Doctopus & Autocrat are 2 add-ons created by Andrew Stillman that are currently supported by New Visions, a Non-profit organization). There are no Docs add-ons in this list - add-ons for Sheets & Forms tend to be more complex and require more maintenance / updates.
What about installations?
38 add-ons have more than 100K installations, Easybib being at the top with nearly 2M users! The second one, Flubaroo has "only" 700K users - both are mostly targeting EDU users.
The most installed add-ons are not necessarily those which have received the most updates / care by their authors (some haven't been updated since 2014) nor are they the best rated add-ons. The third one, Thesaurus, rated 2.24 / 5, hasn't been updated since 2014 but still has a nice installation rate (about +30K users in 3 months).
You can also see that most of those add-ons are available on Google Docs. It's the most used editor between the three so it makes sense (more audience, more installations).
Let's talk quality
In terms of ratings, I thought it was best to only take into account add-ons that have at least 10 votes (below that I'm not sure the rating means anything). 59 are rated 4+ and most are between 3 & 4, meaning most of the things you find on the add-on stores is at least okay, if not great.
Finally 103 add-ons have been rated more than 100 times, and 10 have been rated more than 1000 times. The add-ons that have been installed the most are usually the ones which have also been rated the most. The ratio nb of votes / nb of installations is pretty low: on average 0.44% of users are voting.
That's it! As a sum up, I would say that 2.5 years after its creation, the add-on store now contains a good variety of apps, many of them are well maintained by their authors and nicely rated. Good work Google and all the add-on creators :)