As Nicholas Quah wrote in May, Google Search is now officially surfacing podcast episodes (helping with the eternal visibility/discoverability woes of a growing industry).
Google is surfacing podcast episodes in Search based on what’s talked about in the show, as well as its title and description. The links take you to Google Podcasts, of course (for now). This works for English content and United States searches.
“We’ll soon add the ability for publishers to specify a playback destination, such as a third-party website or app. This means people can discover podcasts that may be exclusively available by purchase or subscription on third-party podcast providers,” according to the release.
Quah broke down the potentials of Google stepping into the podcast platform war, so it’s interesting that podcasters will be able to choose to not have the Google Podcasts’ link show up. From May:
For what it’s worth, I’m still hesitant to invoke the “platform war” framework…