Track chrome extension's reviews

Question

I want to give a reward to the users of my chrome extension when they rate the extension on the Chrome Store. Do you know how I can monitor this event (user rating the extension)?

I am thinking of 2 ways to do so:

1. If I can monitor the event directly from the chrome extension, I would just put a button which will redirect to the Chrome Store, and will monitor when the user rates the extension.

2. If I cannot monitor the event, I can also put a button, which will redirect to a page, from where a popup will be opened with the chrome store (and maybe I can track the rating in the popup from the main page?)

The first approach is obviously the one which is the most interesting to me, and the second would only be an alternative if there is no way to use the first one.

Thank you!

Answer 1

There are no events associated with Webstore ratings/reviews that are part of Extension (or Webstore) APIs.

In fact, you can't track what the user does in Web Store at all, since you cannot inject a content script there - it's a special case in Chrome code. Reasons for that are pretty obvious - a content script in the Store could do automated ratings/reviews.

So the most you can do is rewarding a user clicking a link to Webstore somewhere in the extension (say, "Please rate the extension [here]"). You'll have to believe that the click is done at least with the intent to rate.

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Extra consideration: some unscrupulous app developers would show the following UI to the user:

How would you rate our McGuffin?

• [I would rate it 5 stars!] (link goes to Store rating page)
• [I would rate it 1..4 stars] (link goes to developer's feedback form)

This obviously screws up the rating and should be considered unethical. Please avoid that - any honest rating should be equally precious.