Research

What if we told you there’s a simple podcast optimization that correlates with 6.7x better keyword rankings on Apple Podcasts, yet 91% of podcasters completely ignore it? After analyzing 332,528 active English podcasts, we discovered that strategic tagline usage in podcast titles and author fields is one of the most underutilized SEO opportunities. The results? Pretty surprising. And it’s dead simple to implement. The Discovery: Taglines Correlate with Dramatic Ranking Improvements Our analysis examined how podcasts perform in keyword rankings based on their use of taglines: descriptive text separated by dashes ( - ), pipes ( | ), or semicolons ( ; ) in their title or author fields. ...

Imagine you wanted to find a new podcast to listen to. The most likely move in 2026 is to ask your AI assistant something like “What’s a good true crime podcast?” or “Best business podcasts for entrepreneurs?” or “Podcasts about mindfulness?” But what do these AIs recommend? Over 4 weeks, we systematically queried four major AI assistants — ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Perplexity, and Gemini (Google) — across 849 different podcast topics to create the first comprehensive map of AI podcast discovery. ...