Why is my podcast not appearing in searches?

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Level 1

9 points

Why is my podcast not appearing in searches?

I have been creating an audio Podcast for over three years of the RSGB GB2RS News Broadcast each week on behalf of the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) (this is to do with the Amateur, Ham Radio hobby in the UK) and all has been fine. I have just checked however and if I search on the podcasts iTunes name "GB2RS" (or in fact ay part of the title) it is no longer displayed in the search results, however a similar podcast created by a different team (TXTalk) is. I did have some issues with my feed (gb2rs.podbean.com) about 9 months ago and Podbean "cleaned" up some of the settings that I had defined there for the iTunes required fields - so it is possible this is when the problem was introduced.

I have just re-published the last edition, but this time with the iTunes fields set manually rather than taking defaults, so far I also cannot find this edition by searching in iTunes.

Those who are subscribed to the podcast are still receiving it but of course the fact that the iTunes search is not showing the podcast (as it used to) means that no new listeners are added.

Hopefully this is something that is easy to fix? Thanks in advance for any help.

Regards, Ed.

Posted on Sep 19, 2015 11:05 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 20, 2015 12:14 AM in response to edurrant

I'm afraid there's not much you can do. When a new podcast appears it can take some days before the Search will find it, but normally it does work OK once that's happened. As long as the title appears clearly it should be searchable, and the other tags are irrelevant to this. All I can suggest is that you contact Support, though I can't promise they will be helpful. Go to https://itunespodcasts.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new and click the disclosure triangle at the right of the 'Choose a topic' field - choose 'Other' and proceed from there.

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Answer 2

edurrant Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 20, 2015 12:34 AM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Thanks Roger, I'll wait a few days to see if my manually adapted version does appear in the search and then if not use the contact link that you gave - thanks. I did conact iTunes support originally but they tthen routed me to here as they only dealt with the music and sales side of things I think.

Thanks

Ed.

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Answer 3

Sep 20, 2015 12:36 AM in response to edurrant

Yes, iTunes Support and Podcasts Support are different, and the left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth (Matthew, 6:3).

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Answer 4

Sep 29, 2015 3:58 PM in response to edurrant

edurrant,

If your podcast isn't showing in iTunes, you may consider contacting iTunes Podcasts Support at http://support.itunespodcasts.com/.

Your feed seems to be in good shape, so perhaps support can help. : http://gb2rs.podbean.com/feed/

-Fan

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Answer 5

edurrant Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 29, 2015 11:33 PM in response to Podcast_Fan

Thanks, I have raised a ticket on the pocast support team at Apple, I have a number assigned however I am still waiting after almost a week for any other response.

It appears as if my podcasts entry in the iTunes database has simply been deleted from what I can see. My Podcast hosting company has suggested simply creating a new account with them and a feed with a different name and then to submit that new to Apple. The trouble with that is that I will lose my existing subscribers unless I can get them to change and my historical files will be lost to them unless I can have them copied across to the new account. Another problem is that the new (free) account by Podbean is limited to 500 CHARACTERS for each edition, considering I include the complete script in text with the podcast, this is not acceptable.

Hence it would be nice if Apple could resolve the problem. I have seen that in my feed, the Apple iTunes Podcast ID field is empty, as I can't view the podcast any more in iTunes, I can't find out what it is (/was) and put it back.

Regards, Ed.

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