Let’s find out how to create a Google Podcast and get your message out there for a wider audience to hear. Google Podcast isn’t what many people think it is. It’s not a distribution platform like Spotify or YouTube.
We have some more details to go over, but suffice to say, even though it’s not its own podcast distribution platform, it’s absolutely essential to your podcast’s success and visibility.
Let’s talk about what Google Podcasts really are, how you can use them to your advantage, and why you should sign up for it immediately upon reading this piece.
About Google Podcasts
Google Podcast is not a publishing platform, but rather, a distribution platform. It allows you to get your podcast into Google search results faster, and get in front of viewers that want your content.
That explanation would be too simple though, wouldn’t it? Google uses RSS feeds to find new podcasts and crawl websites.
Crawling is how Google finds content, and indexing is what happens when it’s added to a directory. Google has to crawl before it can index, and Google Podcast can help crawl it faster.
So either you can tell Google that you have a new podcast episode, or if you go through a publisher, that publisher will automatically tell Google and it can reduce the need to manually input it into Google Podcasts.
The thing is, if you publish in a ton of places, Google will pick just one of those publishing notifications to say “Okay, this is a new episode” and then index it. The more publishing platforms you use for your podcast, the better.
Who is Google Podcast for?
There’s one side for publishers, and one side for listeners. For publishers, Google Podcast is for you to share your podcast to more channels of the internet and make it easier (and quicker) for Google to find it.
For listeners, it means a more rich, dynamic experience where they’re actually recommended podcasts that they’ll like (that’s a dig-in on you, Spotify).
Google Podcast is for anyone who wants to publish or listen to podcasts and wants to get that information as fast as possible, whether it’s recommendations, or finding the specific podcast that they want to listen to and where it’s hosted.
Ideally, this is for people who already use Google services, and want to put their trust in Google to direct them to good quality podcasts based on their search terms.
In our experience, and to no one’s surprise, Google does a phenomenal job at sorting through podcasts based on your search terms.
They also update podcasts very quickly after they’re indexed, so they’re actually one of the best ways to find out when new podcasts come out, short of having notifications enabled for the platform it’s published on.
Creating a Google Podcast
To create a Google Podcast, you first have to understand that there are Google Podcasts for publishers (that’s you) and Google Podcasts for listeners.
To create a Google Podcast, you have to sign in to their manager and tell Google “Hey, I need you to crawl the internet for my podcast and put it up for people to find in your directory,” which is what they’re designed to do.
For newer podcasts, this means that Google will put your podcast into their app and search results as quickly as possible, which will often be quicker than just waiting for them to crawl it automatically.
However, as your podcast gets bigger and bigger, you’ll find that your podcast might already be listed by the time you take it to Google Podcasts. Again, this is a directory, not a standalone publishing platform.
Best-case scenario is that you don’t have to focus on telling Google to crawl your website in the future, but you should still use Google Podcast and request that it find your podcast.
That’s because it gets into their Google Podcast app much faster, which is where the majority of people are listening to podcasts when they search for apps.
Google Podcast Manager
Google is all about analytics. The analytical service they provide to anyone who publishes online content is extremely important for the way we all develop online content, especially podcasters.
Because it’s a directory, it’s giving people recommendations directly from the Google search results page, and then data is born. You get access to it.
That data is important for your growth. It can show how many viewers your podcast had, how many of the segments or sections of your podcast were watched/listened to, and the average percentage viewed/listened to by your audience.
This is all pretty incredible stuff, and this is how you use that data:
- Percentage Viewed/Listened to: This is best known as retention. Now, retention rates get a little difficult to dissect with super long programs, but more often than not, a long program will actually retain more viewership than short-form content in the podcasting space (outside of YouTube clips, but that’s a different beast entirely). When you know the average amount being viewed, you can alter your content flow and help fix retention problems that you might have not otherwise known about, and make your podcast better. We listed this one first because until you start increasing your retention, the rest of it is harder to see change and growth in.
- Segments Viewed: You have 10 segments, but only 5 of them are getting significant traffic. What do you do? You can make your podcast shorter to focus on five really high-quality points, or you can cut those and replace them with something that’s more akin to the segments that are bringing in the views. Until you get retention, you can’t really get enough data to know how many people are listening to the entire podcast or not.
- Total Podcast Views: Retention and regiment views will contribute to overall views and visibility. The more views you get, the more social proof there is that your podcast is something special that people can get behind. Views increase over time as long as you’re putting out consistent, quality content. Views going up is just as important as views going down. It could mean it’s time to try a new angle, or your content has gotten stale, so pay attention to this metric (but don’t live and die by it).
Because Google owns YouTube, we can use the same way that they value metrics on YouTube to make our podcasts better using this information.
Should I Still Use Google Podcasts if I Upload to Apple Podcasts?
Because Google and Apple are direct competitors, people often get this mixed up. Both are internet-centric companies and they both know that they should make as much money as possible, so they don’t filter out results from their competitors.
Safari isn’t ignoring the fact that Google Podcasts exist, and vice versa.
You can upload to Apple Podcasts, which is a publishing platform, and then Google can crawl and index that. However, since it’s not directly being fed into Google Podcasts, you should still try to manually send in a crawl request to expedite the process as quickly as possible.
As time marches on, and you upload to platforms like Apple Podcasts and others, Google will begin to automatically crawl and index your podcasts. You shouldn’t stop trying to manually crawl though just to be safe, even if it does get auto-published.
Are Google Podcasts Free?
Since it’s not a publishing platform, it’s not requiring a fee or a subscription model or anything along those lines. It’s simply directing people to podcasts through a directory, just like how Google operates for internet search results.
Google Podcasts are free, and their app is free. The app helps you find podcasts that you might want to listen to, or find direct search results.
At no point does anyone on either side of the table have to pay; Google is using this to further their product as the ultimate search engine.
Could that change? Possible, but we don’t see it happening. Google has its own methods of publishing already that show great success and promise, so there’s no indication that they’ll move to a paid model to simply help you find podcasts. That would be a bit ludicrous.
Get Your Podcast to as Many People as Possible
Google Podcast is a directory service, so you aren’t going to find podcasts to listen to directly on Google Podcast. But what you will find is a new source to publicize and promote your podcast, bringing you more viewers, and hopefully more revenue.
All growth is exponential.. Don’t give up just because you’re not getting the traction you want right now. Use Google Podcast, and any other distribution network that you can possibly get your hands on, and give every potential viewer every opportunity to join your audience.
