You can see information about how users found your show or episodes, including:
- How many people saw your show in a search result
- What search terms they were looking for
- Which episodes turned up in search results the most
This can help you understand how new traffic gets to your site, and what users are looking for.
The podcast discovery metrics are shown at the bottom half of the show and episode pages in Podcasts Manager.
FAQs about discovery data turndown
Can I still access and retrieve historical discovery data?
You will be able to access and download any historical data from your Podcasts Manager account until May 15, 2023.
Will my podcast stop showing on Search?
How to use this data
There are a number of ways to use discovery data. Here are some tips:
- Decide if enough users are seeing your show (impressions). If not, ensure that your podcast is findable by linking your homepage and RSS, and providing enough information on your homepage and RSS file for Google to get a good idea about your show and episode theme and topics.
- See how many users are finding your podcast through Google Search, and whether changes to your home page or other marketing efforts affect the number of people who search for your show.
- See which search terms cause your show to appear in Google Search results, and see which ones have the highest click-through rate. Terms with a low click-through rate are not appealing to users, or else users think that your podcast isn't the best fit for the topic that they are searching for. Google tries to determine the subject of your podcasts and episodes based on the title and description of the podcast or episode, as well as any text and other content in the website linked to by your feed. Make sure that your feed and page descriptions accurately and completely describe the content of your podcast, in order to appear in search results for appropriate queries.
About the data
- The report shows only search data from Google Search. The report doesn't include data from any other discovery mechanisms, such as searches from the Google Podcasts app, from the Google Assistant, or from any other Google Podcasts playing service.
- Only links to Google Podcasts are counted. Links that point to pages on your site, or anywhere other than Google Podcasts, are not counted.
- Data is aggregated at the show or episode level, depending on the context. See Show-level data for details.
Metrics
The following discovery metrics are reported. You can change the displayed metric for each table.
- Impressions
- A user saw a link to your podcast or episode. The episode link must be scrolled into view to count. An impression is counted only once per search; scrolling a link into view, then away, then back into view counts as only one impression.
- Clicks
- A user clicked on a Google Search result link that took the user to your episode in Google Podcasts. A click does not mean that the user actually played the episode, only that they clicked the link in Google Search, leading to an embedded player for the episode on Google Podcasts.
- Click-through rate
- The ratio of (clicks ÷ impressions)
Search terms
These are phrases that users searched for, if the search results included a visible Google Podcasts link to an episode in your show. Top search terms data is calculated and sorted by the selected metric for the table.
Show-level data
Discovery data on the show-level page is scoped to the selected date range.
The following data is shown:
- Show-level impressions, clicks, and click-through rate: These are impressions, clicks, and click-through rate (see Metrics) for your show, aggregated by show. This means that if a single search showed multiple episodes for the same show, this counts as one impression or click for the show, no matter how many episodes were seen or clicked. See below for an example of calculating this data.
- Top search terms: Which search terms showed episodes from this show, sorted by the selected metric. Only terms used in a minimum number of searches are shown, to protect user privacy. A maximum of 1,000 search terms can be shown.
- Top discovered episodes: A sorted list of which episodes scored the highest in the selected metric in the selected time period.
Data example
- A user search shows a carousel of 3 episodes from your podcast, and a blue link to your podcast homepage, similar to this:
- The user does not scroll through the list.
- The user clicks one of the podcast play links.
| Data type | Impressions | Clicks | CTR |
|---|---|---|---|
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Show-level totals |
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Top discovered episodes |
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Note that the blue link impression for the podcast (which appears above the episode carousel) does not accrue data here because it links to the podcast homepage, not to a page on Google Podcasts.
Also note that additional episodes scrolled out of view do not accrue data.
Episode-level data
In the episode-level page, you can see discovery data for the selected episode.
The following data is available:
- Episode-level impressions, clicks, and click-through rate: These are impressions, clicks, and click-through rate for this episode.
- Top search terms: Which search terms showed this episode, sorted by the select metric. Only terms used in a minimum number of searches are shown, to protect user privacy. A maximum of 1,000 search terms can be shown.
