About Google Podcasts
Google Podcasts allows you to search and listen to podcasts from across the web, via a variety of surfaces such as Search, the Google Podcasts app, Assistant, and Android Auto.
Google Podcasts itself does not host any of the podcasts you may find through the service. Instead, as a search tool, it allows people to locate podcasts published on the web in the same way that Google Search allows people to find web pages, images or videos published online.
Google Podcasts & search results
Given that search results on Google Podcasts come from public content across the web, result links are only removed in limited circumstances in accordance with our overall content policies for Google Search, as is the case with any web content.
Google Podcasts recommendations policies
Beyond search results, Google Podcasts may also display podcast recommendations, such as showing top, trending or personalized recommendations through the Explore tab, or in other ways. Content displayed through recommendations is given prominent treatment and, because of this, is required to comply with more specific policies than search results.
In particular, to help ensure recommendations are a helpful experience for everyone, we have systems in place to prevent showing those that are in violation of Google Search's overall policies and these policies for Search features:
- Dangerous content
- Deceptive practices
- Harassing content
- Hateful content
- Manipulated media
- Medical content
- Sexually explicit content
- Terrorist content
- Violence & gore
- Vulgar language & profanity
Learn more about these Content policies for Google Search.
Google Podcasts also has these feature-specific policies:
Ads and sponsored content
Advertising and other paid promotional material should not exceed your non-sponsored content. We don't allow content that conceals or misrepresents sponsored content as independent, editorial content. Sponsorship, including, but not limited to, ownership or affiliate interest, payment, or material support, should be clearly disclosed. The subject of sponsored content shouldn't focus on the sponsor without clear disclosure.
Elections content
We strive to serve fresh and authoritative content on voting and election processes and may remove voting information around elections if that information is outdated or originates from user-generated sources.
Misleading content
We don't allow preview content that misleads users into engaging with it by promising a topic or story that is not reflected in the underlying content.
By default, our systems work to prevent any content violating these policies from appearing in recommendations. We also manually remove any violating content not caught by our systems, then look at such cases to understand ways to improve our systems going forward.
We may make exceptions to these policies based on artistic, educational, historical, documentary, or scientific considerations, or where there are other substantial benefits to the public.
How to report a podcast
If you have an issue with a podcast recommendation within the app, please follow the instructions here to report.