Google adds PodCasts to Search Results Pages for Desktop & Mobile Search

Google is adding audio podcasts to its Search Results Pages including the FIRST Page, alongside news, videos, photos and web links. You'll be able to play the audio podcasts directly from within Google Search Results Pages. This feature is being rolled out to Web Search Results as well as the Mobile Search Results properties. And the clicked podcast can be started on your desktop and later continued on your smartphone seamlessly.

That means searchers won't have to leave the Google Search Page and go to an external audio media player or elsewhere to listen. They'll be able to listen via the Google Podcasts app on phones or on the Web.

Google estimates that there are now some 2 million podcasts available for listening, and it wants to help people find them. In 2018 it launched a Google Podcasts app, saying at the time, it hoped to double the audience by exposing more of the podcasts to more people.

Google Search Results, Google SEO, Google PodCasts SEO, SEO Agency

In a recent interview, Google product manager Zack Reneau-Wedeen said he expects with podcasts in Search, podcast listeners will increase exponentially in US, India and other fast adopting countries globally.

The podcast search feature will be rolled out gradually and searchers will need to include the word "podcast" in their query at first. Eventually, the Google search engine will get smarter and be able to show results from podcasts without it, Reneau-Wedeen says. He said Google is using "speech technology" to monitor each podcast and create an internal transcript for search results. So not just your initial audio script but entire episode words will be crawled & indexed by the Google Crawlers to rank the podcast in their Search Results.

Later this year, Google will open up podcast search to the Google Assistant, which is available on its Google Home speakers, as well as on iOS and Android phones.

"For example, when you ask the Google Assistant for podcasts about a certain topic, such as `Hey Google, play a podcast about Marie Curie,'” Google notes in a company blog, "it will suggest episodes for you related to your search."

The clicked podcast audio is played via the Google Podcasts app and web player.  So, your listening progress is synced with Google servers, so you could start a podcast show on your computer, for instance, and continue on your phone later.

Also, the audio player agnostic podcast listening ensures that the Searcher is not just locked on the device screens but can be saliently voiced  information about your business, brand, product, service or advise from your podcast while on-the-go on their phones.

Hence, we at MindStar NetCorp predict this feature to enhance the engagement time of the Searcher with their liked Search podcast results and become an important channel of prospect engagment for the Brand.