Ratings and Reviews with Daniel J. Lewis

Jess and Margy are the co owners of Interview Connections, the first and leading podcast booking agency. This is the podcast where you will learn all about podcast guesting and how to leverage podcast interviews to grow your brand awareness.

On today’s episode of Rock the Podcast, Jess interviews Daniel J. Lewis, creator of My Podcast Reviews and host of The Audacity to Podcast! Daniel and Jess discuss everything you’ve ever wanted to know about podcast ratings and reviews, and answer Rock the Podcast listener questions!

Daniel first explains the differences between ratings and reviews. Ratings are 1 to 5 stars, are anonymous, and may or may not have accompanying reviews. “Ratings” counts usually include reviews, too. Reviews are the written opinions and always include ratings on Apple Podcasts (but not required on Podchaser). iTunes showed this separate number, but Apple Podcasts doesn’t. 

As of this recording, there are 1,406,628 valid podcasts! Of those podcasts:

• 2.0% (28,762) have 20+ USA reviews
• 0.9% (12,529) have 50+ USA reviews
• 0.5% (6,488) have 100+ USA reviews

Jess and Daniel also talk about the differences between streams and downloads (spoiler: there’s barely any difference), and other metrics podcasters should be paying attention to. Instead of looking at how many people are listening to your podcast, Daniel recommends podcasters should look at how listeners are listening to your podcast. Are they listening to just one episode? Are they listening to the entire episode, or do they drop off in the middle? These questions can provide immense value to podcasters looking to grow and engage their audience.

Daniel also discusses how to spot artificial podcast ratings and reviews, why ratings and reviews have no effect on podcast rankings, and why subscriptions are the most valuable currency in podcasting. 

You can connect with Daniel at My Podcast Reviews: His service helps podcasters know, engage, and grow their audiences through the power of podcast reviews. My Podcast Reviews collects reviews from all 175 Apple Podcast stores, plus additional platforms. His service shows podcasters their reviews, your ratings, helps them understand podcast engagement, and even offers a service to make leaving a review for podcasts even easier for listeners.

For more information about podcast ratings and reviews, check out Daniel’s episode on that topic right here!