Featured Badge Removed - Please Help.

[Blaine Vess]

PrintFriendly has been in the Chrome Web Store since December 2011.

I recently noticed that we were no longer included in the Work Essentials collection on the Web Store’s home page, so I asked support what might have happened.  They pointed out that our Featured badge was recently removed.

I thought it was potentially due to the fact that one of our recent submissions was denied because the software we added to create PDFs was calling a remote script, which we were unaware of and promptly removed it.

So I nominated PrintFriendly for the Featured badge again, and here’s what we received:

===

We’re unable to accept resubmissions at this time. Refer to the following guidelines to learn more about creating high quality extensions:

• General best practices
• Developer program policies
• How to create a great listing
• Image best practices

===

I’ve reviewed the documentation and I can’t figure out what the issue is.  Over the past year, we’ve totally modernized the design of the extension, we’re launching new versions regularly, we’ve added a detailed change log, and we recently removed the collection of users’ locations.  I believe we're playing by the rules.

Could someone please provide some guidance on what we’re doing wrong?  We’d like to get this updated.

Thank you for your help.

Blaine
PrintFriendly
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/printfriendly-print-pdf-a/ohlencieiipommannpdfcmfdpjjmeolj

[Blaine Vess]

I forgot to include the top part of the message I received:

Thanks for self-nominating your extension to receive the Featured badge. Based on our review, your extension: : PrintFriendly - Print, PDF, and Screenshot Web Pages with ID: ohlencieiipommannpdfcmfdpjjmeolj  does not qualify for the Featured badge or merchandising eligibility because it doesn’t meet our compliance best practices.

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Blaine,

Thanks for reaching out about this.

To set expectations up front, we don't generally share the reasons for rejecting a self-nomination, and even with the featured badge inclusion in a collection is an editorial decision. We regularly change the extensions in collections and so I can't promise anything specific in that regard.

That said, I can't immediately see the reason why your self-nomination was rejected. It may be that there are good reasons that I am not aware of, but I've asked the team to take another look and I will keep you updated.

Thanks,

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

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[Blaine Vess]

Hi Oliver,

Thanks so much for getting back to me.  I totally understand that collections change all of the time.  The main thing that has me concerned is that our Featured badge was removed and that we didn't quality for a new one, which is certainly a sign that we're doing something wrong.

I was thinking that perhaps our change log had gotten too long and was clouding our description with random keywords, and maybe that was undesirable by the Web Store team.  So when we did an update a couple of days ago, I moved the change log to a separate Google doc.  You can see this change reflected on our extension's page.

The key is, we take this very seriously, and we believe we're doing everything by the book.  Please let me know if and when you have an update.  Thank you again for your help.

Blaine

[Blaine Vess]

Hi Oliver,

Given the update I made to the change log, would it be logical to simply apply for a Featured badge again?

Thanks,

Blaine

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Blaine,

I definitely appreciate the concern. I do think there is a chance in this case you are eligible for the badge and there was just a mistake on our side - but of course, I don't want to say for sure until the team has taken a look.

Moving the changelog out seems like a good idea regardless, but in this case I don't believe that was the reason for your rejection.

I've flagged this on our side so I would hold off applying again for now while that is looked into :)

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Blaine Vess]

Hi Oliver,

That makes sense and I'll wait to hear from you.  Thanks again for your help.

Blaine

[Blaine Vess]

Hi Oliver,

I'm just checking in on this thread.  Any word from the team yet?

Thanks,

Blaine

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Blaine,

Unfortunately no updates yet, but I haven't forgotten about this.

Thanks for bearing with me.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Blaine Vess]

Hi Oliver,

Thanks for the update and I appreciate you keeping us top of mind. Standing by.

Blaine

[Blaine Vess]

Hi Oliver,

Have you heard anything new on this?

Thanks again,

Blaine

[Oliver Dunk]

Hi Blaine,

Unfortunately no updates, but this is slowly moving along on our side and I'll keep you updated.

I'm sorry this has taken so long so far.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Blaine Vess]

Hi Oliver,

I really appreciate you staying on top of this and I understand these things can take time. That said, it’s been over a month now since we started this discussion, and the impact on our extension is noticeable. As an example, since losing the Featured badge, our rank in the Tools category fell from #25 to #3,721 according to Chrome-Stats.com (screenshot attached).

It’s been tough to watch, especially when there are thousands of extensions with the Featured badge that have poor ratings and haven't been updated in years, like Image to Text (OCR), Tab Saver, and Web Translator.

On the other hand, we're continually improving our extension, maintaining a modern design, and making user-focused privacy and security updates, which you can see in our release notes. We really care about doing things the right way.

At this point, I hope the team might be able to give this some priority. We know you’re doing your best and we’re grateful. This just matters a lot to us.

Thanks again,

Blaine

[Oliver Dunk]

Just to close the loop here, I see that the featured badge has been restored.

As I mentioned in our other discussion we were looking into this internally, even though there wasn't much we could share during that time.

I'm really sorry it took a while, and I completely understand the potential impact on your extension. This was an edge case and I'm glad we were able to restore the badge with more investigation.

Oliver Dunk | DevRel, Chrome Extensions | https://developer.chrome.com/ | London, GB

[Blaine Vess]

Hi Oliver, it has indeed been restored.  Thank you so much for your help!

Blaine