CWS listing settings to get name attribution

Displaying developer name in Chrome Web Store app listing

Chrome Web Store‘s developer attribution doesn’t seem to be very clearly documented anywhere. It took me a while to figure out how to display my name, instead of my domain name on my app listings. Seeing people ask about this in Chrome-apps mailing list, I thought I’d put the details out here for Google to index.

CWS1 offers two kinds of owner attribution for app2 listings:

  • by domain name, and
  • by developer’s chosen name

Here’s how to set them both up:

Web-domain attribution

Website attribution
Domain name attribution

‘offered by c306.net’

This is the default, standard implementation. To get the listing to show your site’s domain as the provider, you need to get the domain verified using Google Webmaster tools, and then select it as a verified website in the app’s listing settings page:

Verified website set to your app's website
Verified website set to your app’s website

For this setup, you don’t need to provide a link to the website in the field below the verified website. CWS will just show the name of verified domain, without a link to the full website URL provided below.

Developer name and website link

Developer name attribution
Developer name attribution

‘offered by Aditya Bhaskar

To display the developer name (or developer’s company name) in the attribution field, and to link to your app’s webpage, requires turning off the verified website field.

\1. Set the verified website field to None, and provide the full URL to your app’s website:

Verified website set to none
Verified website set to none

\2. On your CWS Developer Dashboard, set your developer display name to whatever3 you want to display against your apps:

Providing a developer name
Providing a developer name

That’s it. Now your app listing should show your desired name under the ‘offered by’ field, with a link to your website.

Note: One downside of using developer name attribution is that you cannot now trigger inline installs from your website. Inline installation requires that your website be verified in the CWS listing. But that breaks name attribution, and reverts to domain attribution. So, if you really need inline installation, you may have to stick to domain name attribution for now.


  1. CWS = Chrome Web Store hereafter. 
  2. App = hosted Chrome apps and extensions. 
  3. Whatever = whatever you want, within reason. You cannot put ‘Google’ as your developer name and not expect Google to ban you and your apps. 

5 thoughts on “Displaying developer name in Chrome Web Store app listing”

  1. Hi Aditya,
    I tried doing this for my webapp, but I can’t since the developer dashboard doesn’t allow me to turn off the verified websites field. (as of Jan 2016). It only lists the relevant websites and has not option for “none”. Is this trick still working, and say, for a newly launched app? Please let me know.

    1. Hi Amol

      I’m not sure about newly uploaded apps, but the option to specify ‘none’ is still available in my apps.

      I’d suggest trying to contact the CWS support team through either Chrome-Apps google group, or this form.

      Cheers!

      Adi

      1. I did contact them but their CWS team somehow doesn’t know the details of their own system including this tidbit. If you don’t mind, could you publish a 2-liner web app thru the apps script interface and check?

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.