Do Podcast Reviews and Ratings Really Matter?

At the end of practically every podcast, you hear it. “Please rate and review this podcast!” You’d probably think most show would have tons of ratings and reviews. And you would be wrong: a majority of shows have zero ratings and reviews.

So do ratings/reviews really matter? How do they factor into getting your podcast listened to? And with multiple platforms, how can you keep track of them all? Let’s find out, shall we?

Do ratings and reviews affect your podcast’s visibility?

Nope. There’s your answer so lets move on! Just kidding. Contrary to popular belief, ratings and reviews don’t affect the algorithm for Apple and Spotify charts or search rankings.

According to Apple’s support website, “Ratings and reviews do not influence Charts or Search, but they can help listeners discover and engage with your show as they explore new podcasts.”

Spotify offers similar calculations for their charts with “a combination of overall follower counts and the number of recent unique listeners.”

Then what are ratings and reviews good for?

Their purpose is more for social proof and gauging how you’re doing. Dan Misener of Pacific Content analyzed 20,000,000+ ratings on Apple and discovered that if your show has “4 or more star ratings, you have more ratings than 50% of all shows.” When someone does find your podcast, ratings and reviews can easily separate you from the pack of inactive, ineffective shows out there.

For gauging how you’re doing, reviews can be a great way for listeners to share feedback. I think Spotify does a better job than Apple with this, moving away from reviews and something closer to a comment section for each episode.

So how do I keep track of my ratings and reviews?

You’re full of great questions today. Every platform can be manually checked. Apple and Spotify offer email notifications. They’re turned on by default but if you start to get a high influx, you can always cut them down to a summary email instead of individual.

There are other platforms where people can rate and review your podcast such as Podchaser, Good Pods, Castos, Podcast Addict, and now YouTube technically. They’re worth peaking at every once in a while make up a small amount of listeners aka only the die hard fans of podcasts in general. Once you’ve built a community, your podcast host can tell you what apps listeners use in the analytics section. This can help you focus where efforts where it’s most important.

But manually checking can get tedious. If you want a third-party tool for tracking ratings and reviews, try one of the following:

• Podgagement
• PodRover
• Chartable
• Podtrac
• Podkite
• Podstatus

I’ve personally used Chartable and PodRover. If you wind up using one for your ministry or already use one, let me know what you like (or dislike!) about it.