Ranking vs. Position: Understanding What Really Impacts Your Podcast’s Visibility on Listening Platforms

Ranking, position… these two notions often come up when talking about visibility on listening platforms. Yet they’re often confused, even though they describe two completely different discovery mechanisms.

Understanding the difference between ranking in the charts and position in search results is now essential to improving your podcast’s performance.

Because while both dynamics matter, they don’t rely on the same goals nor on the same optimization levers 🔍

1. Why Discoverability on Platforms Is (Still) the Name of the Game

The success of a podcast no longer depends only on the quality of its content. In a saturated ecosystem, where thousands of new episodes are uploaded every day, the ability to be discovered has become a central growth lever 🚀

Listening platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts are no longer just distribution channels: they are now search and recommendation interfaces, with their own algorithms for putting content forward 🤖

There are two main ways a listener can discover a new podcast:

• Charts (rankings), where podcasts are highlighted based on their performance at a given time. According to The Podcast Host, 24% of listeners use this feature to find content.
• The search bar, which allows users to directly type in keywords related to a topic, an intention, or a need. This channel represents 70% of discoveries, still according to The Podcast Host.

These two mechanisms rely on different algorithms, signals, and objectives, but they should be seen as two complementary levers within the same discoverability strategy.

2. Rankings: How They Work, Logic, and Metrics

Rankings or charts are the famous “tops” offered by listening platforms. They allow listeners to quickly identify the most successful content, and give creators immediate exposure, often decisive in a highly competitive environment 📈

There are two types of rankings:

• Algorithmic rankings, generated automatically from performance data collected by the platform.
• Editorial rankings, manually selected by the platform teams, often for thematic curation or local highlights.

Numerous and Segmented Algorithmic Rankings

Algorithmic rankings are particularly numerous. Each platform offers dozens of them, spread by country, category, type of content (shows, episodes, new releases…), and updated at varying frequencies ⏰

• Apple Podcasts offers more than 100 different rankings.
• Spotify displays about 75.
• Multiply this by the 175 countries these platforms cover, and you get more than 17,000 algorithmic rankings to track worldwide.

Main Metrics Taken Into Account

To generate their rankings, listening platforms rely on a combination of behavioral data. Here are the main indicators that influence a podcast’s position in the algorithmic charts, platform by platform:

On Spotify:

• Unique daily streams: number of plays by different people in a single day. This measures your ability to reach a broad audience.
• Number of unique daily listeners: number of different people who listened to the podcast during the day. The higher this number, the more attractive your podcast is considered.
• New subscribers: every new subscription is a positive signal to the algorithm. It shows strong listener engagement.

On Apple Podcasts:

• Actual streams: only plays count, not downloads. The episode must be launched within the app.
• Completion rate: the more your listeners listen until the end, the better. This reflects the quality and relevance of your episodes.
• New subscribers: every additional subscriber strengthens your credibility. This is a key indicator of loyalty.

3. Search: The Other Algorithm, Just as Strategic

The search bar is now the main channel of discoverability on listening platforms. It allows listeners to find content simply by typing a keyword or a question 🧠

But unlike rankings, search relies on a semantic algorithm. Its goal is to bring up the podcasts that are most relevant to the query and to user behavior 🎯

Each platform applies its own logic. Here are the three main criteria used in their search algorithms:

On Spotify, indexing is based on:

• Metadata: the podcast title, episode titles, descriptions, and creator name.
• User behavior: clicks, plays, subscriptions from search results.
• Personalized recommendations: the algorithm adjusts results based on each user’s listening habits.

On Apple Podcasts, indexing is based on:

• Metadata: show title, episode titles, author name.
• Engagement: regular listening, completion, listener loyalty.
• Popularity: number of subscribers or overall plays.

Understanding this structure is essential to properly optimize your podcast SEO, also called Podcast Search Optimization (PSO). Keyword choice, listener engagement, and metadata quality each play a specific role depending on the platform 💡

4. How to Climb the Rankings AND Gain Positions in Search Results

At this point, you’ve understood that rankings and search indexing work on different logics. But here’s the good news: you can work on both in parallel. Here are the concrete actions to take to activate both visibility levers effectively ⭐️

To Climb the Rankings

Rankings are based on your podcast’s daily performance. So you need to focus your efforts on engagement right when each episode is released 🧡

• Unique daily streams → Choose a catchy episode title, oriented toward a need or a question from your audience.
• New subscribers → Add a clear call-to-subscribe in your intro or outro, explaining its importance for your podcast.
• Completion rate (Apple Podcasts) → Create a strong promise at the start of the episode to make listeners want to stay until the end.
• Immediate plays upon release → Share a striking excerpt on your social media within the hour after publishing.

To Gain Positions in Search Results

Indexing on platforms relies on metadata quality and a structured strategy. Here are the concrete actions to put in place:

• Target keywords → List the keywords your audience uses to search for a podcast in your niche.
• Keyword placement in metadata → Integrate them into the right fields depending on the platform. On Apple: podcast title, episode title, author. On Spotify: all fields (titles, descriptions, author).
• Competitive analysis → Type your keywords on Spotify/Apple and observe the podcasts that rank well. Analyze their titles, descriptions, and positioning to adapt your strategy.
• Performance tracking → Use Ausha’s PSO Control Panel to track your positions.
• Continuous optimization → Adjust your titles and descriptions based on observed results. Regularly test new wording and measure the impact.

5. Improving Your Rankings and Positions with the Right Tools 📊

Building a visibility strategy is essential. But for it to be effective, you also need to track your results regularly and with the right tools 🧰

Depending on whether you want to climb the rankings or gain visibility in search, there are suitable solutions, starting with those offered by the platforms themselves, which can be enhanced with more complete, centralized tools.

Tracking and Improving Rankings

Listening platforms like Spotify or Apple Podcasts offer their own charts, accessible through their interfaces. They allow you to see if a podcast appears in the Tops according to category, country, or current trends. This is valuable information, directly tied to your podcast’s performance.

To go further, Ausha offers a free tool, Ausha Charts, which centralizes all this data and makes it easier to interpret. It lets you visualize your podcast’s position in the Tops, track your historical rankings, compare yourself to direct competitors, centralize all your Apple Podcasts reviews, and even receive reports by email 💌

Tracking and Improving Search Positions

Being well ranked is one thing. But showing up in the right search results, at the right time, on the right keywords, is just as strategic 🧠

The PSO Control Panel offered by Ausha allows you to manage this aspect precisely and independently. With this tool, you can identify the best keywords to target, optimize your titles, descriptions, and tags in real time, and, most importantly, track your keyword-by-keyword positioning, while comparing your results to those of your competitors.

It’s a solution designed for podcasters who want to treat indexing as a true strategic lever, with concrete and actionable data available at any time.

7. Ranking ≠ Position: Our Summary Table

Throughout this article, we’ve seen that discoverability relies on two distinct pillars: Rankings and Search.

These two dynamics follow different logics, but they should be activated together to build a solid strategy. Here’s a complete summary table to bring everything together:

Conclusion

To gain visibility on platforms, you need to activate two complementary levers:
your ranking in the Tops of Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and your position in the search results of those same platforms. Worked together, these two levers allow you to broaden your audience and anchor your podcast for the long term.

To go further, discover the full suite of Ausha tools to maximize your visibility on listening platforms.

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