Google Play Content Rating Questionnaire

Room Key is a chat app. People create messages, other people read them, and you do not write every line. That user-generated content is part of the app you ship. The content rating questionnaire is where you tell International Age Rating Coalition authorities what the app contains, so they can assign ratings Play will display. Answering as if Room Key were a static notes app, because the empty state looks harmless, is how listings get removed.

Play’s content rating requirements say the ratings come from your questionnaire, calculated by separate authorities that do not share one methodology. This form is not Play Age Signals, and it is not Apple’s social and age-rating questions. Those are adjacent. File this questionnaire on its own.

What the questionnaire is for

You need a rating on new apps, on existing apps that are live without one, and on updates that change content or features enough to change your answers. Play uses the ratings for more than a badge. They help parents judge the app. They can block or filter content where the law requires it. In the EEA, Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, Play describes extra limits for users determined to be minors, including blocking acquisition of mature content and filtering it from search and browse except through a deep link. Ratings can also affect eligibility for special developer programs. The icons belong to the authorities. Misusing them can be a legal problem of its own.

You do not pick “Everyone” because you hope for more installs. You describe the app. The authorities assign the badges. If you think the calculated result is wrong, you can retake the questionnaire. After submission, an authority can still override the rating. If that happens and you need to change answers, you complete the questionnaire again. The number on the summary page in Console is not guaranteed to be the number shoppers see.

How you submit it

Open Play Console, go to Policy, then App content, and start the content rating questionnaire. Enter an email address. Play uses it for correspondence with IARC. Choose a category and continue. Answer every question for the app you ship. You can edit a section after you finish it. You can save a draft and return. Each app can hold one draft at a time. When you submit, the summary shows calculated ratings. If they do not reflect the content, start a new questionnaire from the content rating page rather than arguing with the badge in a screenshot.

After you submit, the ratings and the questionnaires live under Target audience and content on the App content page. Questions about the rating itself go to the authority, using the link in the certificate email, not to a guess in a developer forum. Other IARC questions go to IARC through their site. An appeal is that certificate-email path. It is not a Play Console “request a lower age” button.

Ratings are not one global age

One questionnaire produces ratings from multiple IARC authorities, and Play says those ratings can differ by territory because each authority uses its own logic.

Answer for the messages, not the empty state

Room Key’s questionnaire has to include what people can post. If strangers can send text, images, or links with no meaningful limit, say so. If you moderate, filter, and review user-generated content, that is also part of the app, and the USK descriptions on Play’s page treat moderation in social products as relevant to how youth-protection ratings are thought about. Do not claim a review queue you do not run. Do not skip the question because your own test account only sends “hello.”

Under-rating is the failure mode. Play states that misrepresentation of your app’s content may result in removal or suspension. It also states that app updates and submissions can be rejected for misrepresenting content. A chat app filed as suitable for young children, while the public rooms allow unfiltered messages, is that misrepresentation. The fix is a new questionnaire that describes the rooms, plus whatever product changes make the description true. Changing the short description to “family friendly” without changing the rooms makes the listing worse.

What this form is not

Data safety is collected and shared data, encryption, and deletion. Room Key needs that form too, but it does not assign an age. See the Data safety guide. Do not paste privacy answers into IARC questions. The privacy policy still has to match the messages you store.

Age Signals on Android and Apple’s social age-rating flow are how the operating systems and stores handle age in the product. They are not this questionnaire. If you are building age gates, read those two guides and then come back here to make sure the Play badge matches the content those gates are protecting. A 4.3-style spam rejection on iOS, if you cloned the chat into eight bundle IDs, will not be solved by a PEGI badge. Different stores, different failures.

Keep the badge in the ads and the listing

Play asks you to include the assigned rating when you advertise the app in each region, and to follow the display rules. Room Key’s website should not show a single “all ages” mark worldwide if the certificate shows a higher age in some territories. The store listing will show the local badge. Your screenshots should show a real conversation only if that conversation is representative and allowed at the rating you received. A screenshot of a moderated hello and a store full of unfiltered rooms is the same lie as a low questionnaire.

AppGrowthKit can crop the conversation UI for the listing once you know which rooms you are willing to show. It should not add an age badge you designed yourself on top of the authority’s icon. Those icons are the authorities’ marks. When an update adds image posting, voice, or public discovery, retake the questionnaire if the answers would change. Play requires that for updates that affect the responses.