[App Stores] jpsiemer:
This has been a nightmare for me tonight, watching my app go from a 3.9 rating to a 3.7 in a matter of hours.

I regularly monitor my app's statistics in both the Google Play Developer Console and an app called Andlytics. I look at my average rating, reviews, downloads, app crash logs, etc. Being intimate with my daily numbers, when they start to change drastically, I can easily spot when something is off.

On 11/7/2015, I got hit with numerous fake ratings and reviews. I received a total of 52 1-star ratings for that day, which is about 30-40 above average (I average about 5-20 1-star reviews a day). Other than the countless negative ratings, nothing else was abnormal (normal downloads, normal crash logs, etc). After reading a few of the reviews they happened to leave, the picture became clearer... all of them came from the same handful of devices, and every single one of them had the en/RU language set on their device. I went ahead and flagged those reviews as spam -- so far they are still there, but fingers crossed that they will go away. As far as the ratings go, I am unsure of how to view and flag the individual ratings (reviews left without comments), but I am absolutely sure that they left some of those as well (by my count, at least 10-20). Here are some screenshots I was able to take of the reviews...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GSjJ4RHVpRXAtbUk

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GNUtrSl8tbXZKM0k

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GQjdfdFNxVG5LYUU

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GalU5eTNRdHM1ZHM

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GOHVsSE5oczdRRU0

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GdUpQVTJEUDZOZDg

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GOTJzMGxPSWdtakU

A few days went by with no strange activity. Until on 11/15/2015, I again was spammed like crazy with a whopping 613 1-star ratings! No reviews were left this time -- only ratings. And again, besides the avalanche of bad ratings, other app statistics looked normal (normal downloads, normal crash logs). This time around, I knew exactly what was going on, as I had read about it a few days prior... Apparently there are services out there where users can pay for thousands of fake reviews on a competing app, to ultimately lower its ranking in search results. Notice how in the screenshots below, the 1-star ratings go from a 277 at 9:20pm, to a staggering 609 at 10:12pm! In less than an hour my rating had drop 0.2 -- from 3.9 to 3.7 -- in comparison, my usual rating change for a day is a +- 0.001... By the end of the night, the final number of 1-star reviews settled at 613, as seen in the third screenshot.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GOHAzVmdLVm1FcFU --- 9:20pm

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GbXhMeThydDd0Y2c --- 10:12pm

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByK_ywEzSR7GQlctVGlDejBndW8 --- 12:00am

As you can see, I am clearly being attacked -- most likely by a competitor who wants to get their app ranked higher than mine. I believe that 100% of these ratings (minus the normal 5-20 daily average) are falsified, and would like help in getting them removed from my app's rating. Every moment they stay, it hurts my app's reputation on the Google Play Store.

Does anyone know the best course of action to report these fake ratings? There are several resources on the Google Play Developer help section, but they simply tell you to flag the review -- unfortunately you cannot flag reviews that were left without comments -- which the majority of mine are. I did fill out a generic form for support, but I have no idea if I'm actually sending to the right people. Anything you guys know would help!

Thanks,

-Jake