APODcalypse: Sub-Audible Keyword Stuffing?
When robots figure out how to search audio, you can bet black-hatters will be there to game the results.
To properly index podcast content, sounds need to be converted to something like text, if only for a robot to parse through and make sense of. It's only a matter of when, not if, unscrupulous black-hat scammers try to rig the game.
In this short episode, I'll share one possible scenario that looks a lot like the black-hate SEO game of the late '90s and early '00s. Back then, it was common to display white text on a white background at the bottom of the page. No human would see it (unless they viewed the source of the page), but the at-the-time dumb robots would happily add that text to the visible text on the page. Back then, more instances of the keyword would almost guarantee you a spot on the first page of search results for that phrase.
Today, the most used search algorithms for podcasts are even dumber than these early efforts. And that's a fertile breeding ground for bad behavior and shady businesses to do chart manipulation on a whole new scale. Don't fall for it!
