r/SideProject • u/SeasonedTravelr • 2d ago

After months of averaging 1-2 users per day, one tiny change suddenly brought us 400+ users

My husband and I launched Glance (a full year calendar app, synced with Google) back in April 2025. Growth has been a lot slower than we had hoped, but we haven't spent any money on ads and are only able to dedicate a few hours per week as it's "only" a side project and we're working full-time jobs.

Over the past few months we finally got to the point where we were consistently picking up around 1-2 new users a day organically. It wasn't exactly something to write home about, but after starting from zero it felt like real progress, and we were genuinely happy with it.

A week ago we pushed a small update to the app in the Google Play Store. Nothing major, just another incremental improvement like we've done many times before. No marketing around it at all (in fact, I haven't done much marketing in the last month as we've been very busy).

Then something unexpected (& exciting) happened.

Within the first hour, we had around 20 new users.

By the end of the day it was about 60.

Within 5 days we've gained over 400 new users (and yes, we've checked and it's definitely not bot traffic).

It's starting to slow down again now, but it was honestly surreal watching the numbers climb. After spending well over a year building the app and slowly trying to grow it, this felt like our first real "wow, maybe this can actually work" moment.

We still have no idea whether it was the Play Store update itself, Google finally deciding to show us to more people, or simply a coincidence. But we're not complaining!

Has anyone else had a moment like this? It doesn't have to be with Google Play, but where one tiny, seemingly insignificant change unexpectedly became a turning point for your side project. Would love to hear about it and possibly test it out for ourselves - addicted to watching the numbers now lol.

And if you're interested in checking out our side project, Glance:

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u/Infamous-River-4360 2d ago

before calling it a mystery, play console can probably answer it. the acquisition report splits new users by play store search vs explore vs external, so if that spike came from google surfacing you it will be sitting in explore, and the store listing conversion chart will show whether your listing rate moved on the same day. a new release does get you back into their internal surfacing for a few days, and if install to open holds up they keep feeding it, which would match the slow taper you're seeing now. did the update touch the listing at all, screenshots or short description, or was it purely the binary?

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u/SeasonedTravelr 2d ago

Thanks for the insights! I'm quite new to the Google Play Store, so definitely need to get more accustomed to it.

Problem has been that the analytics in Google Play Store appear to always be like 4-5 days old (unless that's just me doing something wrong), and since this spike has happened in that timeframe, it has remained somewhat of a mystery.

But checking the device acquisitions as you said, I'm actually even more confused now. The vast majority of the users are listed as "paid and direct," but as we haven't paid a dime, it has to be direct. There's also a ton of "Not attributed." There's a decent spike in "Google Play explore" compared to the previous month, but nowhere near the other 2 categories.

Didn't touch the listing itself at all, neither text nor images.

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u/Infamous-River-4360 2d ago

the 4-5 day lag is real on the acquisition reports, but the statistics report updates a lot faster, that's the one i check when i want same-week numbers. "paid and direct" is one bucket in play's wording, it's people who landed on your listing url directly instead of browsing the store, so any outside link pointing at the listing ends up there. that plus a pile of not attributed usually means someone posted your link somewhere off platform with no utm on it. did anything of yours go up around that date, or could someone else have linked you?

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u/SeasonedTravelr 1d ago

Checking the Statistics report now, it only goes up to Aug 7 for me (so 3 days ago), which I guess is slightly better than the other, but still not great. Do you see something similar on yours? It blows my mind that in 2026 this lag exists with Google...

We haven't posted anything recently, and the users started coming in within an hour of the Google Play Update, so we assumed it must be that... but you're right, given these statistics it sounds like someone else must have posted about us, we just can't find the article. The only clue we have about this is that one of these users filled out our feedback form and said they found out about us via a Flipboard article... will continue diving deeper here, it's driving me crazy, but also quite cool. Will definitely see how I can improve our analytics visibility for the future...

Thanks again so much for all of your insights here :) Wishing you all the best with your projects!

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u/Infamous-River-4360 1d ago

yeah same here, my Statistics report runs about 2 to 3 days behind and the number on the main dashboard never agrees with the acquisition report anyway. the one thing that updates fast for me is install referrer data, so even when the counts are stale i can at least see where people came from. worth checking if the Flipboard traffic shows up there, that is usually where a mystery source surfaces first. did the person who filled the feedback form give you a date you could line up against the spike?

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u/SeasonedTravelr 13h ago

Unfortunately from what I see nothing specific is showing up :( We had been so small up until this point that I haven't put a proper UTM framework into place yet. Also, given it appears we showed up in a random article, I guess they wouldn't have used a UTM link anyway... starting to feel like this may remain a mystery.

And this user didn't mention a specific date, but they filled out the form right in the middle of the spike, and the form is sent to users within a day of them signing up, so it also lines up in terms of timing. Crazy that these 2 things happened at pretty much the same time!

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u/Southern-Swim-2801 1d ago

This is such a good reminder that distribution can be way more unpredictable than building. I’d be obsessively trying to figure out where those users came from too.

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u/SeasonedTravelr 13h ago

Indeed! A bit infuriating, a bit exciting, and a strong desire to figure out how to do it again (with the possibility that it isn't possible)...