Updated facts & figures on Google add-on stores
Post date: Mar 08, 2017 3:13:39 PM
Back in September 2016 we published an article about Google add-on stores and how active they were back then. We saw that 91 add-ons have been published in summer 2016 (meaning more than one per day on average), and that 44% of the add-ons have been actively updated.
We would like to review with you how Google add-on stores have changed over the past 6 months, just on time for the launch of Google Cloud Next (the marquee event on Google Cloud ecosystem).
6 months later: Which evolution should we expect on the number of add-ons?
The number of add-ons keeps growing every month, though a little slower than last September; going from 582 add-ons in September 2016 to 670 in February 2017, an increase of 15%.
The distribution of those add-ons is still roughly the same as before. Google Sheets is still the biggest source of add-ons.
Distribution of add-on by Google store :
Do creators still actively maintain their add-ons?
In our last article, we stated that 44% of add-ons had been updated in the last 3 months; this statistic is roughly the same in February 2017: 40%.
Below is a table showing the top add-ons in terms of updates:
Since last September, 7 add-ons have been deleted and one has been delisted from the public gallery, almost only Google Sheets add-ons. Most of these add ons were not updated for a long time or didn’t have a good ratings, but a few were quite popular (e.g. Email Hunter had an average rating of 4.65 with almost 6k users back in September).
How do add-ons perform in terms of installations?
New add-ons are created every week. Here's are the most installed and popular ones:
However, if you look at the top add-ons by number of installation for each add-on store, they have almost not changed in the last 6 months.
Google has changed the way it orders add-ons in the three add-ons stores. They are mostly ordered by the number of installations but some quite popular add-ons are listed at the bottom of the store, regardless of their actual popularity. Template Gallery went from third to sixth position in the top Sheets add-ons since this happened (note: as of mid March, this is now fixed).
Most of the big add-ons are still growing steadily and other add-ons probably won’t catch up soon; for example YAMM has got 35% more users than in September at almost 700K users, and EasyBib is still by far the most installed add-on with almost 2.5M users.
It is interesting to notice that despite all the recent bad rates for EasyBib and the fact that it hasn’t been updated for months, a lot of people still install this add-on. Probably because it answers a real need in the education world (create a bibliography for research paper), and also because it is already the most popular add-on.
So even if the quality of an add-on is degrading, if you’re on top of the marketplace then you will continue to attract users, as people don't really look at ratings or the latest update date before installing an add-on.
Are users satisfied with all these add-ons?
If we look at add-ons that have at least 10 reviews, we observe that users are mostly satisfied with Google stores add-ons as almost 75% of add-ons have more than 3 out of 5 stars.
All add-on stores do not receive the same grades; the average grade for a Google Sheets add-ons is 3.8 and 3.6 for Google Forms while the average grade for a Google Docs add-ons is 3.1.
We also calculated that on average, only 0.31% of users are voting, a significant decrease since September (0.44%).
A high number of votes doesn’t always correlate to a good grade average. Thesaurus is the Google Docs add-on with the biggest number of votes, but it has an average grade of 2.15. In the same way, Fudok has the biggest ratio users/votes (0.51%) of the 20 biggest Google Form add-ons with a 1.75 vote average. It shows that big add-ons attract a lot of users by being on top of the store regardless of users feedback.
However some add-ons do have a high ratio of users/votes and still get a good grade average (like YAMM, Form publisher or Autocrat).
A few words to conclude
Overall, Google add-on stores are for the moment still in a good shape. A lot of add-ons are still being created, and most of them are being frequently updated. Users also seem to be satisfied with what the stores offer as the global rating average is pretty good.
However, while the number of add-ons keeps increasing, the global growth of the stores seems to have slowed down.
Users are also less motivated than before to rate an add-on. As said earlier, they tend to vote more an add-on that they dislike. The market is quite stable as the top add-ons haven’t changed much. We saw that a bad rating average doesn’t prevent add-ons from growing, as some of the biggest add-ons have less than 3 stars; but it is also important to notice that some of the most popular add-ons have really high ratings (Flubaroo or Easy Accents for example).
That is all for this review of Google add-ons stores! We are really excited to see how they will evolve in the future and will be sure to continue doing such reviews!
EDIT: And Google just announced the future launch of add-ons for Google Slides at NEXT!
You can watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S45Ia_925Hc
If you have ideas for a nice Slides add-on, you can ask to participate to the EAP here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScRUaDbbEKmftiQsvHse6kHlimRtuPTJZakQOqjzAVexOhliA/viewform
