A Podcast is a collection of Digital Audio files that you can download or listen via the Internet. Each individual recording is referred to as a Podcast Episode while its creator is knows as a Podcaster.
Podcasts are generally hosted individuals to lead and initiate a conversation, share their stories or report news and events.
There are a variety of purposes for creating Podcasts but the most important ones is to entertain the targeted audience or to keep oneself abreast of the current events. There are instances where subscribers also use them to get to sleep.
Finding a Podcast can be a tricky and time consuming since there are a huge number of Podcasts available on the Web and this number is growing by the minute.
Podcast Search engines allows the user to search for podcasts in much the same way as we search for anything on the world wide web. You can type a word or phrase and the search engine will find relevant Podcasts as well as highlight that segment of the audio in which the search string occurred.
In this article we will be listing and reviewing 5 Free Podcast Search Engines that can help you to find a variety of Podcasts by various artists.
1. Listen Notes
This is a very good Podcast Search Engine and one of my favorites thanks to a number of options and filters that you can avail.
Just click on the Search Box and you can see a list of Trending Topics. You can also find out which episodes are being played currently, Recommended titles, Hot Podcasts, Community Playlists and more. Simply type a few words pertaining to the topic, name or the artists of the Podcast and Listen Notes will search them for you. You can set the search scope as entire Podcasts or only Episodes and sort the results based on their Relevance or Date.
Clicking on any result gives more information about that Podcast, access to previous episodes etc. You can choose to Save, Share, Listen or Download the Podcast audio to your local disk all from the same page.
Overall, this is a great Podcast Search Engine, easy to use with a wide range of options and filters to help you narrow down your search. There are a range of additional features available also available for Premium Members.
Click here to navigate to Listen Notes and start searching for your favorite Podcasts.
2. Pod Hunt
The next Podcast Search Engine in the list is Pod Hunt that is fairly good but not as developed and powerful as the one above as the results are pretty limited.
Just type a few words, press Enter and Pod Hunt will display the results for you. Clicking on any result will give you details about the episode, its description, information about the Artist and links (URL) to the actual Episode Page and the Podcast.
Pod Hunt does have some good additional features such as Categories, Collections or Feeds that you can access using the links above the Search bar. Categories are collections of different Podcasts themes while Collections group the Podcasts into a variety of different types. Feeds are based on Really Simple Syndication and allow you to remain updated about important Podcasts and Episodes. This feature is still under development.
On the whole, this is an okay search engine, quite limited in the search result numbers that it is able to produce.
Click here to visit Pod Hunt and search for Podcasts and Episodes
3. Pod Chaser
This is yet another Podcast Search Engine with more focus on the Web Podcast communities and a good range of search results.
The search algorithm has a lot of depth in that, the results are categorized by Episodes, Podcasts, Playlists and Creators based on the string that you typed. You can click on any search result to navigate to that particular Podcast or Episode and read about it, play / share it. You can click on ‘View all’ results under any particular category and further sort the results by Relevance, Trending etc. Additionally you can also apply Filters based on Episode Type / Length, Date aired and more. These filters ensure that you can easily find the exact content that you need in a very short time.
On the whole, Pod Chaser is also a good Podcast Search Engine although the range of results that it gives are still less than Listen Notes.
Click here to get redirected to Pod Chaser and see if you could locate your favorite Podcasts.
4. Spreaker
This is another good Podcast Search Engine which works similar to Google. Just type your search string and it will take you to the search results unlike the ones above where you need to choose some additional options or categories.
The search result numbers are pretty impressive and will be split between Podcasts and Users. Clicking on any results will allow you to directly listen to the audio as well as read more about the Podcast and its artist.
Overall, this is a very simplistic yet powerful Podcast Search Engine and will honestly not disappoint any user.
To navigate to Spreaker and search for Podcasts, you can click here.
5. Pod Search
This Podcast Search Engine is the final in our list and one of the better ones available. You can browse by a long list of Categories, locate New and Top Podcasts and more.
Just type a few words and Pod Search will display the results in no time. You can read briefly about each result and then click on it to access more information about the particular Podcast and its creator and also to listen to its audio.
Click here to head towards Pod Search
You have now seen that there are a lot of Search Engines with varied features that you can use to search for Podcasts and Episodes. You can navigate to each of the above engines and use them to see which one suits your requirement based on the types of Podcasts that you are searching for.
