Not indexed by Google Podcasts

Hello,

I am confident our support is helping you with the rel= issue, but I wanted to expand possible problems with your website.

I tested your feed and see that it currently does not support HEAD requests. This is required for Apple podcasts. Your server is using Nginx and appears to be using caching. Some administrators who setup Nginx will setup caching based on user agent. If this is the case for then you may have some applications taking longer than others to update because each is cached separately. I would suggest contacting whom ever setup your webserver or web hosting to get more details how nginx is setup. It at least appears to be blocking HEAD requests which gives me the idea that an over zealous administrator set it up and may be doing other things that can be detrimental to a podcast website.

For others reading this thread regarding the comment:

“Google Podcasts: this podcast’s website contains more than one link rel=”alternate” elements. This is not following Google’s guidelines. It is not listed in Google Podcasts under this RSS feed.”

It is true that Google Play Podcasts portal requires that there be only one rel=”alternative” element though it does not stop the submission of your podcast feed to Google Play. The folks who are in charge of Google search are aware that websites can have more than one feed and did not put such a restriction for Google search for podcasts. It is also important to note that Google Play is in the process of shutting down int he coming months, I would not be concerned about Google Play specific requirements because of this.

Google Play podcast portal is available in Google Play for Android only.

Google Search for podcasts is available on Google Search as well as Google Home devices.

If you can reply with the URL where podnews.net said this, we can update them with the details we have from our contacts at Google about Google Search and podcasts.

Hey Shawn and Angelo,

thanks for the great support. So what should I tell my website host to do? Should they just see how Nginx is set up or make any changes right away?

Here is the link from podnews: https://podnews.net/podcast/1330614234

The reason I thought I was having trouble with google podcats is that the subscribe button on my powerpress subscribe page was telling me that the podcast is not indexed by google podcasts. Is there a way to fix that subscribe button?

I appreciate the help.

How old is your podcast? It can take a few weeks (or possibly months) after you start publishing for your podcast to be properly indexed by Google and added to Google Podcasts.

I have had it for over a year, but still learning on the way. I am just trying to get it on a couple more platforms, because the only one that has been working consistently is apple podcasts. Is there a portal I can check to see if I am listed in google podcasts? And how would I fix that power press subscribe button then?

Thanks

I searched for your show in the Google Podcasts app and can confirm it’s not there. This page lists Google’s recommendations for getting listed in the app:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/podcast

Looking thru what’s there, I’d say your feed meets Google’s guidelines. At the bottom of the page, there are a couple suggestions that may help.

Register your feed here:
https://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/publish

And/or get some help on Google’s support forum:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters

It is also possible that this is a temporary glitch that’ll work itself out over time.

Thanks for the help Shawn,

I have contacted the forum! I dont think that it is temporary because it has been delisted for awhile now.

In regards to Angelos comments earlier in the thread, concerning Nginx and HEADrequests, what should I tell my webhost to do?

Thanks a lot.

Main thing would be to contact support for the company hosting your podcast feed and media files and ask them to turn on http head requests for your server. These requests are required by most podcasting platforms, so you should have them enabled no matter what.

The Nginx caching thing is a bit above me but I’d be mostly concerned about the http head requests at this time.

Hello @maxlwie,

I did some further testing. We used podba.se to see that head requests were not supported. I found that HEAD requests are supported on your website in most cases. Podba.se uses a blank user agent for the HEAD test, the problem has to do with a blank user agent making requests to your site return a 403 Forbidden error. Contact your host and let them know they need to allow blank user agents to access your website. This should not block Google search however. This lead me to do additional research…

The issue appears to be with your home page. It is setup as noindex, meaning it is not allowed to be indexed by Google and other search engines. This means that Google will not crawl this home page. It does say ‘follow’ but from my experience if noindex is set it will not scan the page for the podcast tags.

More importantly when you use the tool on Google to build your podcast feed, they check the home page for your podcast, if it is set to noindex, then they will not index it. This is by design, basically if the pages your podcast link to are noindex, then they assume they should not be indexing the podcast itself.

View source on your root home page and find the robots tag to confirm for yourself:
<meta name='robots' content='noindex,follow' />

I am guessing you are using something like Yoast SEO plugin, if that is the case you can easily change this editing your home page.

Once you make the change, you can test your website with Google webmaster tools (nothing to do with podcasting), as long as your website can be indexed by Google search then you should be good to go.

Thanks,
Angelo

Hey Shawn and Angelo,

WOW! I really really appreciate all your help. I am not using Yoast SEO plugin, but I am using the Itheme Security Plugin. I wonder if this is causing the setting to be “noindex”. I will have to do some further research on this subject. It is weird, because I used to be in google podcasts and havent made any major setting changes or installed new plug ins. Any tips on how to figure out what is causing my homepage to be setup as “noindex”? Could it be my Theme?

Thanks a ton for the great support!

maxlwie

I just looked into my general wordpress Setting->Reading and realized that I have the command “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” checked. Could this be causing the “Noindex” setting on my homepage? Should I uncheck it?

Thanks

That could definitely be the source of the “noindex” command that Angelo found. Unless you really don’t want search engines to crawl your website, you should uncheck that option, save the changes, and then clear any site caches if applicable.

If that in indeed the culprit, I can’t say for sure how long it’ll take Google Podcasts to start working again. But it’d be worth checking Google Podcasts in a couple weeks to see if your show is working there again.

HEllo,

Yes the option built into WordPress “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” adds the noindex tag to every page, you definitely want to uncheck that option and click save. You would have had a hard time getting your website to appear in Google search with that checked.

The Itheme Security Plugin could be doing things that block services like Apple to accessing your website but it should not have anything to do with the noindex tag or preventing Google from indexing your website. Because you are on Apple I would come to the conclusion that the Itheme Security Plugin is working correctly for podcasting.

You can speed up the process of google indexing your website by using their webmaster tools / Google Search Console. You would submit your sitemap.xml, let google check things, etc… I cannot provide help with that but there are many articles on the web that should be able to help out with that. This is all web SEO related stuff, not necessarily podcasting specific but it all connects together.

Thanks,
Angelo