Metadata won’t be enough for fulfilling user needs with podcast search; the next generation of that search will feature voice recognition.
Speak up! Do you have a podcast now? Have you integrated any pre-roll or sponsorship mentions to monetize it? Give us a shout at WebProWorld.
Podcast search offers a different challenge for potential advertisers and the publishers who want to find sponsorships, Chris Richardson reported from SES Chicago; he said monetization will come from finding people willing to exchange cash for a mention during a show, similar to how radio advertising works right now.
Voice recognition – that’s the future of podcast search as seen by Blinkx co-founder and CTO Suranga Chandratillake, during the SES Chicago session on Podcast Search. 20 to 30 words to describe a podcast that’s twenty to thirty minutes long aren’t enough to index a podcast properly. Transcripts help greatly, given current technology, but few podcasts offer them.
Joe Hayashi from Yahoo’s podcast team (he’s a senior director of product management) noted how his company has used tagging to make searching for podcasts easier. Richardson noted this seems to play off of the approach they’ve taken with photo-sharing site Flickr.
Feedburner CEO Dick Costolo said his company looks past search submission for podcasts, but he did recommend that podcasters promote one feed for search, include metadata, and ping those search services when updates become available.
Costolo felt podcasters should worry more about location and distribution than making money from their podcasts.
As far as SEO goes, Amanda Watlington from Searching for Profit dished out a few tips on podcasting and search optimization:
– give the podcast a good title
– optimize the sound files – tags have meaning
– use a separate landing pages for the audio content (use a different landing page for each new episode)
– optimize these landing pages
– provide subscription information on landing pages
– build correct and valid feeds, (RSS 2.0, iTunes, Yahoo) validate your feeds (iTunes does not redistribute, you have to build an iTunes feed)
– submit your feeds
– optimize your sound files (ID 3 tags)
– use RSS editors and feed managers (feedburner, RSS editors, FeedForAll) ensure your RSS is valid
Richardson observed, “It seems being found is almost more of a task than producing the content itself.”
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
