How Podcast Charts Work
How listening apps decide on where they rank your podcast
How Apple ranks your podcast
Apple does not clearly state how their ranking algorithm works but this is what most experts agree on in a nutshell. Your chart rank mostly depends on:
- The number of new subscribers you get within a short time period.
- The time period the algorithm takes into account is about one week.
- Recent subscribers are more valuable than old ones.
The easiest way to increase your chart rankings is to ask your audience to subscribe to your podcast on a single day - or at least within a couple of days.
If you get 100 additional subscribers and 90 of them subscribe on a specific day, your podcast will get a better rank in the players than if you would get the same 100 subscribers spread out across one month.
Keep this in mind when doing marketing for your podcast.
Why placements in the charts important? They describe the potential virality and visibility of your show in the players. Not being ranked, does not mean that nobody listens to your show but it expresses indirectly that it will be hard for a listener to stumble upon your show in the respective players and therefore influences the potential virality of your show.
Why is my podcast not ranked?
Podkite does not decide which podcast gets ranked in a certain category, country, and listening app.
In some countries (esp. USA) it is harder to get ranked because of the number of competitors you may have.
Again, this mostly depends on the number of new subscribers your show gets. This is not necessarily connected to your download numbers.
Why is my podcast not ranked in a certain country?
For Apple, this mostly depends on the number of new subscribers a podcast gets. For other players, this might be slightly different. The various countries a podcast appears in the charts depends on the same factors plus, how well your competitors are doing there.
As an example, you may see most of your downloads coming from the US but the highest chart rankings in e.g. Norway. This is possible because your competition may be stronger in the US and it only needs a few subsribers in Norway to rank there but many hunderds in order to rank in the US.
Sometimes you might see surprising results here.