View your listening data at the show or episode level. See play counts, audience retention by episode segment, device breakdowns, and more.
Show-level page
The landing page for a show on Podcasts Manager displays show-level analytics.
Important facts to know about your show data:
- The data shown in the chart totals and the table is restricted to the time period selected. Use the date selector at the top of the page to specify the time period.
- An episode will appear in the table if it satisfies certain conditions.
- You need at least Viewer permissions on a show to see data for a show.
- Episode data is retained for 16 months.
- It takes about 1-2 days for new listening data to be displayed on Podcasts Manager.
- Learn more about how the data is counted.
- Data is shown only as far back as 30 days before the show was first claimed, even though data is retained for 500 days.
Show-level charts
The show page includes the following charts:
- Plays: Number of times a user listened to this show for at least 5 seconds on that day. Multiple listens of the same show by the same user on the same Pacific Time Zone day are counted as one meaningful play. The data is calculated only once per day, even if the chart shows hours within the day.
- Minutes played: Number of minutes played for this show on that day. A user must listen to at least 5 seconds for this to be counted. Multiple listens by the same user of the same 5-second segment on the same day are counted as a single play. The data is calculated only once per day, even if the chart shows hours within the day.
Episodes table
About the table data:
- An episode will show a Processing label for a day or so after Google first discovers it.
- If the episode was published after the selected time period, it will appear in the table with zero data. Choose a later end date to your time period to see episode data.
- An episode with data in the last 16 months can be shown even if the episode was removed from your feed, or was on a previously served feed but not the currently served feed.
- Episode data is limited to the time period selected.
- Episodes are identified by URL in the RSS feed. If an episode's URL changes, any new data will be associated with the new episode URL, and you will lose continuity of your data. If you change the URL of an episode, it will appear twice in the episodes table for your show, once for each URL.
If an episode doesn't appear in the table, remember that an episode must satisfy the following conditions to appear in the table:
- The episode's publish date as specified in the feed is before or during the currently selected time period.
- The episode was on a served feed at some time, and that served feed was verified for this Podcasts Manager show.
- The feed must have been crawled by Google when it contained the episode. (That is, Google Podcasts must have served this episode for the show.)
- If the episode is no longer served, it has listening data within the selected time period.
The table provides the following information about each episode:
- Plays: Total number of meaningful plays for an episode. A meaningful play means a user listened to 5 consecutive seconds of the episode in a single day. Multiple listens of the same episode in the same PT day are counted as a single play.
- Plays in first 30 days: Total number of meaningful plays for this episode in the first 30 days after the Published date. Repeat listens in the same day are ignored.
- Average played: Average percentage of the episode listened to by all listeners.
- Length: Average length of the episode as streamed or downloaded by all listeners, including ads or other dynamically-included or variable-length segments.
- Published: Episode publication date as declared in the RSS feed. Not the date when Google discovered the episode.
Show discovery
Information about how people found your show. See View your discovery data.
Episode-level page
Click the episode in the episodes table on the show landing page to see detailed listening data for that episode for the selected time period.
Important facts to know about your episodes:
- Data is shown only for the selected time period. If you see an episode with 0 listens, it might have listening data outside of the selected time period.
- If you see a label Processing applied to an episode, it means that we've just found it, and are still processing the listening data for that episode. Check back in a day or two to see your data.
- If you don't see data for an episode, try expanding the date range.
- Once you have accrued any data for an episode, it will remain in the report as long as any data is available for the episode in the last 16 months.
- If the same episode URL is used for two different shows in Podcasts Manager, both shows will display data for that episode.
Episode-level charts
The episode page shows the following charts:
Audience retention chart
Use this chart to see where listeners drop off, or to see which parts of your episode were the most popular.
The chart shows how many unique listeners listened to a specific segment of the episode during a single day. If a single user listened multiple times to the same segment in one day, it is counted only once; if the same user listened to the same segment over two different days, it is counted twice. Days are measured as midnight to midnight, Pacific Time Zone.
Because listeners can start listening from any point in an episode, and listeners may re-listen to favorite parts (or share links to favorite parts), the middle of the episode can have more listens than the start time.
Listening event timestamps are based on the actual episode times on a user's device. However, the audience retention chart shows an "averaged version" of the episode: this is the averaged episode length of the episode for all listeners, which can depend on variable length inclusions such as ads.
When you show actual user event times projected onto an averaged version length, the times might be a little off, because of the variation in episode length. Therefore, you should remember that the event timings in the audience timing chart are approximate, not exact.
Plays/minutes played charts
Shows how many users played your episode on a given day.
- Plays: Number of times a user listened to this episode for at least 5 seconds on that day. Multiple listens of the same episode by the same user on the same Pacific Time Zone day are counted as one meaningful play. The data is calculated only once per day, even if the chart shows hours within the day.
- Minutes played: Number of minutes played for this episode on that day. A user must listen to at least 5 seconds for this to be counted. Multiple listens by the same user of the same 5-second segment on the same day are counted as a single play. The data is calculated only once per day, even if the chart shows hours within the day.
Embedded player
Use the embedded player on the episode view page to hear what occurred at different segments of an episode. Use this to understand why listeners dropped off at a specific time, or which segments were most popular. However, remember that if the episode includes variable-length segments, such as ads, the times shown in the retention chart may not exactly match the playback times in the embedded player.
If the episode file is unavailable, the player will not work.
Listening to an episode with the embedded player doesn't count as a play on Podcasts Manager, but will probably be counted as a download or play on your hosting provider.
Episode discovery
Information about how people found your episode. See View your discovery data.
Troubleshooting
If you have created a new show based on a feed that Google has never seen before, it can take a while for Google to start serving the feed to listeners and collecting data. In this case, you will see a "Show not available on Google" note in the analytics report for your show.
If you see episodes listed, but the chart does not show data, the chart is zoomed in to a time period without data. Change your date selection to All time to see your listening data.
If you see the message "This show is currently not available on Google" on your show's landing page, then Google is not serving the podcast to users. Either Google has never seen the feed before, or it might be part of a podcast that Google previously served to users, but is no longer serving. If this is a new show in Podcasts Manager, wait a few days for Google to start serving your podcast and accumulating data. If this is an existing show, read how to troubleshoot this issue.
Show being served from another feed
If you see the message "This show is now being served from a different feed" on your show's landing page, then Google has chosen a new feed to serve for your show, and it must be verified before you can start seeing new data. Learn more.
Other issues
Read the troubleshooting guide for more troubleshooting tips.
Export your data
You can export data from any chart or table at the show or episode level. To export data, click the "more" link next to the chart or table, and choose the export format.
Known issues
- Email notifications are not being sent for all important events.
- Listen data can only be recorded if the listening device has internet connectivity. Listens on an offline device are not recorded.
