AP 0730: How Do I Troubleshoot My Podcast Feed When I’m Missing Episodes?

AskPat 730 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here. Welcome to Episode 730 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week. Now here's today's question from David.

Dave Doggett: Hi, Pat. Dave Doggett here in Nova Scotia, Canada. Huge fan of your work, been listening to you for years. I'm primarily a sales video developer. In fact, my main business is SalesVideos.com, but I also produce some podcasts now thanks to you. I'm noticing with at least one of the shows that iTunes is not listing all of the episodes. On this particular show I've done six episodes, and iTunes only has four of the six episodes listed, but two other podcasts that I have iTunes has all of the shows listed. I don't recall doing anything different with the ID tags, anything out of the ordinary there. I do everything that you've basically taught through my Word Press sites and Power Press and all that good stuff. I'm just wondering if you've had experience with some of the episodes not being listed on iTunes for any of your podcasts and if you did how you got around that. Thanks, Pat. Take care. Also, I'm also a licensed fishing guide up here. I know you like to fish. If you ever do get up in this part of the world, let me know. I'd be more than happy to get you out on the water. Take care. Bye-bye.

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, David? Thanks so much for the kind words and the offer to go fishing. I would love to do that and man, I bet where you're at it's beautiful. If I ever make it out there, I'll definitely let you know, that's for sure. I wanted to answer your question because this happens all the time for many different reasons. One thing I would do is if you're having any trouble with your feed and the way your podcast looks on iTunes which does happen from time to time, sometimes it's an iTunes problem, and they need a few days to catch up on things. If it seems to be a persistent problem, one thing I would recommend doing is validating your feed. There are tools out there that will let you do that. By validation I mean you're able to look at the metadata behind it and see actually what iTunes is seeing. Then if you can see that when you validate that you're missing some episodes, then that means there's something going on, and we have to go a little bit deeper to discover what the solution might be.

There's a tool out there, it's free to use. It's called CastFeedValidator.com. You take your podcast feed, you plug it in there. Then it will show you what iTunes sees. If you can see that the last episode that is there or the newest one is not your actual newest one, then you know there's a problem with something that's going on on your website. Now if you see all the episodes there that there's supposed to be there, then it's an iTunes issue. Then I would actually reach out to iTunes support, and it's going to take a little bit of time for them to get things fixed. This doesn't happen a lot, but when it does happen I know it's so annoying. The best thing you can do is reach out to iTunes through support, through iTunes, and I would actually reach out through Twitter, if you can. Look up the iTunes podcasts Twitter handle or the iTunes support, if possible.

Now if you do find that when you validate your feed again at CastFeedValidator.com, there are some things you can do. One thing you want to do is make sure that the episodes that are missing actually do have the, what's it called? The file enclosure. If you go back into WordPress for those particular episodes, scroll down all the way to the bottom. You'll see where it says modify existing episode that is coming from the PowerPress plugin option. Click on that and make sure that the enclosure is there, meaning the MP3 file is there because that's what the readers, the feed readers see. If that enclosure is there, then that means it's a podcast episode for them. If not, then it doesn't count as a podcast episode. It counts as a regular blog post. Depending on how your feed is set up that could not work out very well, if it's not included in there.

Now another thing you can do is make sure that the file is correct with the host that you're using. Whether you use PowerPress or not to get your podcast up on iTunes, and what not and have control of your feed, even if you just use Libsyn and Libsyn's RSS feed, you can look at that and make sure the episode is there and that it fully uploaded. Sometimes when we upload those files they get corrupted for whatever reason. It happens on every server, and it's edge case. It doesn't happen very often, but again it's one of those things that you have to check. Check those files, see if you can play them back on those servers, if possible to make sure they're there. Then of course, make sure all the metadata is there too. I know, David, it's frustrating because sometimes things break even though you did everything the same as before. You'll have to do these checks, and it's probably not your fault. It's something you have to research and dig deeper with.

Hopefully, that solves your problem. If not, reach out to me at Pat Flynn on Twitter, and we could see if we can get that problem fixed for you. David, you rock. Congratulations on the podcasts, plural, and your show and all the fishing you're doing, just amazing. Can't wait to hopefully hang out with you one day. I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show.

For everybody else out there listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, head on over to AskPat.com, and you could ask right there on that page.

Thanks so much, I appreciate you, and here's a quote to finish off the day by John Paul Aguiar. He says, “Nothing big will happen in your life until you build off the many small things.”

Cheers, take care. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye