The upcoming release of Windows Phone 8.1 looks to be a major rework of the OS that runs Windows-enabled mobile phones. While the release date for Windows Phone 8.1 has not yet been announced, developer previews of the operating system have been available for a couple months. Those with access to this preview version of Windows Phone 8.1 have noted that the OS comes with a podcast aggregator app as a standard feature. This is good news for podcast listeners and producers, as it’ll create an easy way for Windows Phone users to subscribe to podcasts. If you want to ensure that your podcast will be easy to add to this new aggregator, you’ll need to follow one simple guideline: Be sure your podcast’s RSS feed is discoverable by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.
The new Windows Phone 8.1 Podcasts app won’t be powered by a built-in directory like most other podcast aggregators. Instead, when a user wants to add a new show, they’ll enter either a show title or a subject of interest into the Windows Phone Podcasts app’s search box. From there, the app will do a Bing search for the show title or subject. And from those results, it’ll help the user get subscribed to new shows. For this reason, the search engine must be able to easily locate your podcast’s RSS feed. And while it may seem like an obvious requirement to have your show’s RSS feed linked from your main podcast website, there are still a lot of podcasters who (for whatever reason) don’t do this.