Audio SEO – The Next Big Thing On Google! – JT It has been claimed that Google will soon be displaying podcasts in search results too. And, this claim has already started showing its effect, as we are already being able to see such podcasts in certain searches. Now what all comes with this change? Yes, you may have already guessed it – Indexing! Along with this modification, Google has also claimed that it will be soon indexing podcast content and returning audio clips in SERPs.
Google’s audio transcriptions in videos As we all know about Google’s speech-to-text amazing feature that has been on since 2017, the search engine will also start transcribing podcasts. In fact, Google has already started implementing the feature in videos, without even creating a transcript of the audio portion of the video! Isn’t that intriguing? Google made a smart move by initiating this practice with videos. It did so because it knew that YouTube is a planetary system to the suburb of Google Podcasts, and has an immensely powerful infrastructure backing it. Now, if Google can return results based on the audio portion of a video, it is obvious they can do the same for audio files too!
Will audio content be returned or transcribed text? It is expected to begin with extensions of the podcast engine, including automatic transcription and full-text search. But, one question here is whether Google will return audio content directly, or if it will use transcribed text. Generally, returning audio clips should be better as it may better match searcher intent, and offer a richer experience than plain text. Returning audios will also fill a content gap for voice devices, and provide a direct bridge into full podcasts and other non-text content.