Aggregating and analyzing podcast reviews

Challenge

Managing multiple podcast feeds means checking reviews across a range of platforms, and none of them show the same data in the same place. We manage podcast technology for several local churches and for the Space Rocket History podcast, and the same question kept coming up from everyone we worked with: is there a single place to see all my reviews and ratings? There wasn’t one. Podcasters were manually checking Apple Podcast storefronts in different countries, Podcast Addict, and Podchaser one by one. For an active show with listeners across multiple platforms, that’s a significant amount of time spent on something that should be automatic. The problem was common enough and specific enough that building a solution ourselves made more sense than waiting for one to appear.

Solution

We built GetPodReviews on Laravel and Postgres as an aggregation platform that pulls reviews and ratings from over 28 Apple Podcast storefronts, Podcast Addict, and Podchaser. Podcasters log in and see everything in one unified feed without any manual effort on their end. The scraping runs automatically and keeps the data current so the feed reflects new reviews as they come in. Users can filter by platform, sort by date, and search across their review history without switching between tools. The whole system is built around one premise: a podcaster should be able to see all their reviews in one place by logging in, nothing more.

Results

What started as an internal tool for podcasters we already worked with grew into a product used by people outside our network. The review aggregation problem turned out to be common enough that a real solution was worth building properly. The platform runs, the data updates automatically, and anyone who wants a single view of their podcast reviews has a place to get it. Churches we work with use it. Independent podcasters use it. The Space Rocket History podcast team uses it. The problem we originally solved for our own clients turned out to be shared by a lot of people.