How Blackhat Marketers are Ruining the Apple Podcasts Charts
This year has had a lot of rumors of chart manipulation within the tp podcasts on Apple Podcasts. In February, Discover Pods asked if it’s possible to game the Apple Podcast charts. There’s no doubt that people are paying their way onto the top charts now. I decided to get to the bottom of this by learning who’s behind this, how they do it, and if this is legitimate or not.
Who’s Behind the Chart Manipulations?
If you search for “iTunes podcast top rank” at Fiverr.com you will see lots of “podcast promoters” from Bangladesh. Why are there so many people in Bangladesh doing this? I chatted with a dozen of them, and even called 6 of them on the phone to try to learn more about this. None of them seem to understand why it’s popular only in Bangladesh, but they had a few clues that explain why.
While speaking with promoters from Bangladesh I got a few to send me photos of the office they work out of. Here is a typical setting that I saw.
IT freelancing is exploding in Bangladesh. According to Upwork, a popular freelance site, Bangladesh is now the third largest source-country for IT freelance workers. A lot of tech savvy people there under 25 are learning how to make money online by doing any work they know how to do.
It’s likely a podcaster who understand the ranking algorithm, taught a freelancer in Bangladesh how to do this, and it was then passed around. Podcast promotions has been a skill that’s being passed around in Bangladesh now. This skill is being passed around between friends and family members because there seems to be a growing market in podcasting. But what they’re doing is considered blackhat marketing.
How Blackhat Podcast Promotions Work
I interviewed a half dozen podcast promoters in Bangladesh and asked them to explain step by step how it’s done. There seems to be two methods of doing this.
I spoke to one podcast promoter on the phone and this is how he does the promotion:
Suppose you have a podcast, ok, I open [the] iTunes [desktop app], and click connect, then go to the podcast UR. I then subscribe, then look at all episodes. Then I download all episodes by clicking the “get” button on each episode. Wait 2 minutes, then pause all downloads. Then sign out and do it again [with a new Apple ID].
But another promoter told me this:
I just use different AppleIDs to login and subscribe.
Within the podcast promoter community these two methods seem to be what most people use to “promote” a podcast. Which is otherwise known as exploiting the Apple Podcasts algorithm to falsely climb the charts.
But here’s the part that may surprise you. It only takes 30-50 new subscribers a day to get your podcast on the top 200 podcasts in Apple Podcasts. This is surprising because apparently that’s how many actual new subscribers top shows are getting a day through Apple Podcasts, and it doesn’t seem like that many.
Why is this called “Blackhat Marketing?”
According to the iTunes Terms and Conditions it says:
You may not use iTunes to: plan or engage in any manipulative activity.
By paying someone in Bangladesh to subscribe to your show over and over with different AppleIDs with the sole intention of ranking up in the charts is considered manipulative activity. By violating Apple’s Terms and Conditions can potentially get your show kicked out of Apple Podcasts. It’s not safe to hire these promoters.
Not only that, but it’s cheating. By hiring these promoters you are essentially buying fake listeners only to make your show look bigger than it actually is. It’s a lie. It’s false advertising, and fake marketing. Nothing is legitimate or real about this kind of “podcast promotion”.
When podcasters use podcast promoters like this, it ruins the credibility of Apple Podcast charts. Some popular podcasting apps use the Apple Podcasts top charts within their app to help users find new shows. Some podcast awards nominate shows based on their performance on the Apple Podcast charts. These charts are a big deal and the more they are corrupt the worse their reputation will become.
As I write this, I count over a dozen shows currently being promoted like this and are on the charts. It’s rampant now. But Apple is aware of the problem. They comment on this during the 2018 WWDC conference and they have asked Fiverr to stop allowing podcast promotion services like this. We hope Apple finds ways of detecting this and updating their ranking algorithm to not let shows so easily climb the charts by doing this.
But Don’t You Get a Lot of New Listeners From Being on the Top Charts?
Not necessarily. I’ve spoken to a few people who have done this and here’s what I’ve learned. By being ranked on a sub-category hardly gets your show any new listeners. There’s just not that many people looking at the sub-category charts. So by ranking up higher on there, you probably won’t see any new listener counts.
Now if you’re ranked in the top 200 of all categories on Apple Podcasts, a lot of people will see your show. But getting them to listen is another big task. The cover art and title are really what is going to draw people in after that. If it’s not interesting or alluring to people, they won’t listen. Often I’ve seen shows pay a promoter to get their show on the top charts, but it has a dumb title and horrible cover art and it results in 0 new listeners. So no, just because you’re there doesn’t mean it’s going to automatically get a bunch of new listeners.
More Information
Want to hear what these podcast promoters sound like on the phone? Want to know more about how I came to these conclusions? Listen to episode 27 of Darknet Diaries where I interview numerous promoters, and dissect this entire operation.
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