App stores all have unique ways of trying to organize ratings and reviews. ReviewBot gives you the option to track multiple locales in order to see what feedback users are leaving for your app in different countries or languages.
This post will outline a short overview of what we at ReviewBot mean when we use the word locale and summarize how each of the app stores categorizes reviews.
Definition
Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:
In computing, a locale is a set of parameters that defines the user’s language, region, and any special variant preferences that the user wants to see in their user interface. Usually, a locale identifier consists of at least a language identifier and a region identifier.
To us, a locale is either a language or region that the owner of the app store uses to filter reviews with the intention of making them relevant to the user viewing them.
Google Play
On the Play Store, Google has used a language-based categorization. Let’s say English is the chosen language on your device. If you leave a review, people with the same language setting on your phone (English in this case) can see your review. Someone with a different language setting, such as Italian, will not see your review. As an app developer, if you want to see the reviews left from people with different language settings, you can add them from the Locales tab. The default setting on ReviewBot is English.
App Store
For the iOS App Store, Apple categorizes reviews by country. The country field is tied to the address saved with your iTunes account. Let’s say you created your iTunes account with an address in Spain. When you leave a review, people who live in Spain will be able to see your review. That review will not be visible to someone who lives in the US. Similar to Google Play reviews, if you want to see the reviews from multiple countries you can add them to your app in ReviewBot through the Locales tab. The default setting on ReviewBot is the country that you chose when searching for the app.
