• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 4, 2019

Google announced earlier this year that podcasts will begin indexing in search query results -- good news for agencies like Merkle that have expanded into podcasts.

Merkle recently launched a weekly podcast called SEO in the Lab that features interviews with search engine optimization professionals and webmasters.

Host Alexis Sanders, technical SEO account manager at Merkle, in the coming weeks will feature interviews with a variety of brands. Season one of the podcast focuses on ecommerce, with each guest sharing insights about SEO that are specific to retail, as well as general career advice in search marketing.

Merkle will release episodes each Monday. Listeners can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and SoundCloud.

As for indexing in Google Search, the engine said people will have an option to search for a podcast and find some episodes in the search results.

When Google introduced its podcasting strategy last year, Google Podcasts Product Manager Zack Reneau-Wedeen told Pacific Content the company's technology would have the ability to transcribe the podcast and use that to understand more details about the podcast when indexing it in search results. The speech-to-text feature, which uses the content as metadata, is now reality.

Those searching for specific information can find a part of an episode because Google's artificial intelligence listens to each podcast published, converts the spoken words into content and time-stamps them to make the text searchable.

Google's move will not only help SEO professionals index their podcasts in search results, but could also prompt marketers to spend more in the media.

Marketers spent $479 million to advertise on podcasts in the U.S. last year, up 53% from 2017, according to the latest IAB/PwC Podcast Advertising Revenue Study.

The report, conducted by IAB and PwC US, forecasts that U.S. podcast marketplace revenue will double by 2021 to more than $1 billion.

Self-reported revenue by podcast companies show a similar increase, reaching $345 million -- up 34% compared with $257 million in 2017.

Direct-to-consumer retailers at 22% and financial services companies at 21% spent more on podcast advertising than other industry categories.

Overall, five business categories represented nearly three-quarters of all advertising revenue captured. The other three include B2B at 14%, arts and entertainment at 10%, and telecommunications at 7%.