Podcasts have made a triumphant return, but podcast users still struggle with one thing: the problem of discovery. With so many podcasts out there, how do you find ones you'll actually enjoy?
Of course there are many ways to discover podcasts, and modern podcast managers come with recommendation features, but now you can use a search engine that helps sift through it all and lets you discover the next best podcasts for your tastes.
It's Like Google, But for Podcasts
That's what it says on Listen Notes. The developer clearly wants to highlight the way the search engine works: you just type a keyword and then go through the search results. Here's a statistic from the site:
"You can search 356,822 podcasts & 19,125,358 episodes by people, places, or topics -- (almost) all podcasts you can find on the Internet."
Well, that's more than what you can get through in a lifetime. Using the search engine is easy:
- Type a keyword and search for people, place, topic, etc.
- Search for trending topics as auto-suggested by the podcast search tool.
You can filter the results by episodes or podcasts. You can also reorganize the results by time or relevance. I usually like to search by episodes if I am on a topic-specific hunt. Then, I try to check out the podcast in its entirety and explore what other subjects it covers. If both turn out great, then the podcast is always worth a subscription.
The podcast results page gives you a few convenient links to subscribe immediately, check it out on iTunes, download the file as an MP3, or listen to it in the browser.
Find Niche Podcast Shows
Listen Notes turns up old favorites, but it also helps discover many niche podcasts that get overshadowed by the biggies. The search engine taps into the metadata of each podcast, so results may be dependent on how accurately they are crafted.
How do you search for podcast recommendations? Is it still frustrating?
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