Google is making it easier to hunt new podcasts to listen to. While users have always been able to search Google for podcasts, they have previously needed to had a deeper dig into the results to find the podcasts and listen to them. Until now.
Podcasting is coming of age. While many individuals are only now discovering the medium, podcasts have been around since the early 2000s. The earliest podcasters have launched hundreds of podcasts, and new podcasts are being released all of the time.
The one problem with the already-large and ever-growing number of podcasts ready to listen to are sorting the wheat from the chaff. For every good podcast available there are a handful of bad podcasts. And the trick is to hunt the best podcasts.
Google is interested in helping out by surfacing playable podcasts directly in Google Search results. All one needs to do is find a podcast about a certain topic, and Google will display playable episodes alongside the usual web pages, news items, images, and videos.
As explained on The Keyword, Google will display podcasts related to what is being talked about, with the company transcribing episodes it finds to aid with indexing. In the future, podcasts will also show up in results for searches that do not include the word “podcasts”.
Google is rolling out its efforts to help individuals discover new podcasts steadily, beginning with people using English in the US. For the beginning, this is available in Google Search, but Google will be putting it to Google Assistant and Google Podcasts later this year.
Users can now rest assured that this will not replace publishers completely. While Google will now surface individual playable podcasts within Search results, these will sit alongside lists compiled by websites such as MakeUseOf. It just provides extra choices.
