Podcast Search Engines – Finding episodes, rather than shows

Podscope – Voice recognition software renders the podcasts into text and Podscope indexes the text. Search results provide a media player that will play the audio around your search term and a link to the podcasts’ show notes.

Podzinger – Same indexing approach. Includes both audio and video. Stripped down search interface, with a directory only a link away. Search results display the show title as a link, the episode title and description below that, an abstract, the length of the episode, a link to the show and links to your search term in the context of the show. There is also player on the left, along with buttons to the RSS feeds and the one-click subscription through iTunes or Yahoo podcasts.

Blinkx – Same indexing approach as Podscope but Blinkx indexes both video and audio, with more of a focus on video. Promotes mainstream sources like NBC news, BBC news and the Biography Network.

Singing Fish – Indexes the blog or webpage. You can limit by audio or video or search both. Also can limit by file type (MP3, Windows Media…) or genre of recording (music, movies, news…). You can save your searches and see what the most popular recent searches have been.

Loomia – Membership service. Listeners can rank your individual episodes. More a tool for ranking podcasts than a search engine.

Feedster – Indexes blogs, podcasts and news. You can limit by medium and rank results by date or relevance. With regard to podcasts, it indexes the accompanying webpage / blog.

Casting words – Primarily a transcription service. Podcasters can pay for the service, but Casting Words indexes all the transcripts made of their shows. Small database as a result.