How to Keep Track of Your Podcast Reviews

Don’t let anyone make you feel bad about taking an interest in your podcast reviews. You put a lot of time and hard work into your podcast. Even though your official line is a modest, “it helps the show to be found”, we know it’s really because it makes your day to hear that p0ddyl1znr881 from Uganda really likes what you do.

And even though audiobro436895 from New Zealand told you that your voice makes him want to throw up, you just need to accept that your show isn’t going to be for everyone.

But we’re not going to talk here about why you like to keep an eye on your reviews. Instead, we’ll take a look at how you do it.

Incidentally, we’ll mainly be talking about iTunes/Apple Podcasts in this post. Though it’s far from the only podcast directory out there, it is comfortably the biggest. That means that podcasters naturally pay more attention to reviews on there than anywhere else.

Manually Checking Reviews

There’s 155 different regional iTunes stores. You can only see the reviews in the country or region you have selected in your app.

Looking through this is slightly easier when in the desktop app – you just need to click the little round flag icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

This takes you to a menu where you can click on any other available country or region and see your reviews there.

But let’s be honest, it’ll take ages to run through every single one of them. And as much as I sympathise with you wanting to read your reviews, this is just taking time away from actually working on your podcast.

So, is there a better way?

Podcast Review Tracking Apps

I’ve been testing out two really great apps that take all the time and effort out of this process.

Not only that, but they actually make your reviews shareable too. This isn’t possible inside the iTunes desktop or Apple Podcasts app.

Using MyPodcastReviews or Podrover means any reviews you get are delivered to you automatically, in a shareable format. So your days of clicking your way around the globe in search of praise are over.

Incidentally, both have the capability to include Stitcher reviews too. We’ve all got that one review on Stitcher, and it’s nice to make it feel welcome alongside the rest.

MyPodcastReviews

MyPodcastReviews is the original podcast review tracking app, and it’s the brainchild of The Audacity to Podcast’s Daniel J. Lewis.

To date it has helped over 2,500 podcasters to track over 160,000 reviews.

“Of the reviews we’ve tracked, 95.2% are positive 4- and 5-star reviews. The least-popular rating is a 2-star review (under 1%), while 1-star reviews are under 1.6%. This says that the majority of people love the podcasts they listen to and almost no one is apathetic.”

– Daniel J. Lewis

Sharing

Both from the website and the email digests, every review has its own link.

When you visit that page, you’ll see that review alone, subscription links for the podcast, and social-sharing buttons.

Price

With MyPodcastReviews you can sign up for a free ‘Personal’ plan to track reviews on one podcast.

With the ‘Solo’ plan you can track two podcasts for $55 a year, or $5 a month.

Then there’s the ‘Pro’ plan which allows you to track seven podcasts for $165 a year, or $15 a month.

And the ‘Network’ plan gives you up to fifteen podcasts for $275 a year, or $25 a month.

Paying yearly means you’ll save 10%.

Paid Tier Extras

The free ‘Personal’ plan doesn’t include “business-oriented show” (a podcast that’s about business, or run by a business).

The three paid tiers offer Stitcher reviews, as well as sorting and filtering features (so you’ll never have to see audiobro436895‘s one-star review ever again).

With the free plan, you’ll have your last 30 reviews delivered to you via a monthly email, but with the ‘Solo’ tier you can get all your new reviews on a weekly basis.

On the ‘Pro’ or ‘Network’ tiers you can have all new reviews sent to you on a daily basis if you so desire.

The paid tiers also offer an ‘Integrations’ feature. This combines all the reviews from evert country into a single valid RSS feed, which you can then tie in to things via IFTTT, Zapier, etc.

Podrover

Podrover is a review tracking service with a mobile app option, created by Cesare Rocchi.

Cesare makes software that is “meant to save people time, stress, sometimes both.”

Sharing

Each review has its own independent link with social media sharing and RSS/podcast app subscribe buttons.

You can also create graphics of each review which can be downloaded and shared. These can be optimised for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

There’s also an embeddable widget option. It gives you some code to copy onto your website, which automatically displays some reviews on there.

You can set these to be 1-5 of the most recent, or 1-5 randoms from your bookmarked reviews – basically you can ‘heart’ all your five-starrers so that you don’t end up with audiobro436895‘s one-star takedown polluting your homepage.

Your bookmarked reviews can be set to automatically share in your Twitter feed at chosen times of the week too.

Price

There’s no ongoing free option, but you can try out Podrover by tracking one podcast with a free 30 day trial.

Similar to MyPodcastReviews, Podrover also use a tiered pricing structure.

You can track one podcast for $30 a year.

There’s a ‘Pluto’ package to track three podcasts for $50 a year, or $5 a month.

The ‘Saturn’ package tracks up to twelve podcasts for $150 a year, or $15 a month.

And the ‘Jupiter’ package tracks up to twenty podcasts for $300 a year, or $30 a month.

Paying yearly means you’ll save 17%.

You can get 10% off your first purchase by using our Podrover affiliate link too.

Other Features

All tiers come with the same features.

Podrover doubles up as an RSS feed validator, so you’ll be notified if there’s ever any problems with your feed.

Notifications can be set to come through by email, on Slack, or both. And on a daily or weekly basis.

Podrover includes Stitcher reviews too.

There’s also stats graphs that show you where (on a world map) and when you received your reviews.

And if you want easy access on your iPhone, there’s a free app you can download for that very purpose.

Summary

These are both excellent services for keeping track of your podcast reviews.

You know your own situation, requirements, and budget best, so hopefully this roundup has been useful in helping you to decide which one to opt for.

MyPodcastReviews 2.0 is in the planning stages as the first iteration of this post went live, and Daniel tells me it’ll have more analytics, a WordPress plugin, more attractive sharing options, and some other cool features.

On the other hand, the mobile app is currently a big plus point for Podrover if you’re an iPhone user.

By all means though, try out both and see how you get on before settling on a paid tier. Let me know what one you eventually opt for too, and why.

And in the meantime, if you want to take a trip further down the podcast reviews rabbit hole, here’s a couple of articles for you…

• How to get more iTunes/Apple Podcasts reviews
• How do the iTunes/Apple Podcasts rankings work

Maybe you want to polish up your podcast, or find more ways to expand your audience. In that case, take a look at Podcraft Academy. We have videos, courses, and downloadable resources, about all aspects of making a podcast. Plus, our weekly live Q&A sessions can help with any questions you might have. Won’t you join us?