Apple Podcasts feed shows only a fraction of episodes after domain change

I host a podcast in WordPress.com and recently changed domains from mattcollinsblog.com to afteramherst.com.


Since then, my pod on Apple Podcasts shows only a fraction of my episodes. Every other podcast platform (e.g., Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music) all work flawlessly - every episode past and present appears.


The feed appears to be valid and showing all episodes when testing with one of Apple's recommended external validators:

https://www.castfeedvalidator.com/validate.php?url=https://afteramherst.com/category/extraordinary-people/feed/

 

WordPress Support reps believe the issue may be due to the domain name change and GUIDs changing. They have some warnings about not changing the GUIDs, which they verify did happen.


How do I fix my podcast feed for Apple Podcasts? If absolutely necessary, the original GUIDs could be restored from a backup prior to the domain change, but WordPress Support says that could potentially cause more issues and delays with the feed on Apple.


Thank you!

Posted on Aug 15, 2026 10:18 AM

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4 replies

Aug 16, 2026 4:57 AM in response to matcolli

When you have a query of this sort you need to post both the Apple Podcasts Preview page URL and the feed URL. Without being able to read the feed it's not possible to do forensic analysis.


What I can tell you is that while the Preview page and the Podcasts App on a Mac show only two episodes for this year, both from last Tuesday, subscribing on a Mac (which reads the feed directly) shows a large number of episodes (I think 26), plus many from previous years.


So Apple Podcasts itself (what used to be the iTunes Store) is failing to read all those extra episodes from this year. (It does show some from previous years).


A GUID error would effect both readings; basically if two episodes have the same GUID the later one will be ignored. This doesn't seem to be the case here.


GUIDs must be unique, not only to your podcast but to everyone else's, so it's common practice to use the episodes URL as obviously this must be unique. Transferring the feed to a different URL might cause the GUIDs to be re-written automatically, which should cause every episode to show. Even it they weren't any problem would probably affect every episode.


You should check the feed, looking at the GUIDs for the missing episodes this year and see whether there is anything odd about them. (Any actual error of the sort that can cause problems, such as curly quotes, would have been cauught by the validator.


You could try contacting Podcasts Support and ask them to reefresh the feed:

https://itunespartner.apple.com/contact/?content_type=podcasts

Aug 16, 2026 7:37 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thank you, Roger. I really appreciate the thorough overview.


Here's the info you requested (from my Apple Podcast Connect account)

The Apple podcasts URL is:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/after-amherst/id1486646544


The feed URL is: https://afteramherst.com/category/extraordinary-people/feed/


As for checking the feed for any GUID-related problems, is that something WordPress support can help me do, or is that something Apple Podcasts Support would help with?

Aug 16, 2026 8:12 AM in response to matcolli

Comparing the coding for the two recent episodes, which show, with the preceding one, which doesn't, there isn't anything which would explain this. the GUID tags follow the same format.


Of course, I can't look at what the GUID tags were on the old feed, nor indeed confirm that Apple are actually using the new feed (since they don't provide a way of checking the feed URL). However I assume you would know if the changeover had not happened.


The GUID tags have changed from the old feed, since they use the afteramherst.com domain, but as this is the same in both the visible and invisible episodes this doesn't seem to be relevant.


So I can't give you an explanation, and can onlytsuggest asking Podcasts Support to refresh the feed.

Apple Podcasts feed shows only a fraction of episodes after domain change

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