Articles on: Analytics

Why is there a spike in my downloads, and how do bots affect my stats?

Most podcasts settle into a familiar pattern of downloads. When there's a sudden spike, or a drop, here's how to find out what happened.


Find when it happened


  • Go to the Analytics tab and find Listener Trends
  • Change the date range from All Time to a shorter one, like Past 90 Days, so you can see individual days
  • Hover over the spike and note the date and the number of downloads


Find which episodes were downloaded


  • In Episode Breakdown, click Export
  • Choose a date range that includes the day of the spike, then click the download button
  • Open the CSV in a spreadsheet app like Excel or Google Sheets and find the column for that date


What the pattern tells you


Downloads spread across lots of episodes usually means you've gained new followers. Many podcast apps download a batch of recent episodes when someone follows a podcast, depending on that listener's own settings. Each of those counts as a download, once, when it's delivered. Congratulations!


Downloads mostly on one episode usually means that episode got attention. It might have been:


  • Recently published and well promoted
  • Featured by a podcast app, or in a category on a popular platform
  • About a popular, widely searched topic
  • With a guest who shared it with their own audience
  • Part of a paid ad campaign
  • Shared widely on social media, or featured on your own website


To see where it was listened to, export Podcast Players for the same date range. It shows which apps, embeds, share pages or websites the downloads came from.


How bots affect your stats


Bots are automated programs that request audio files without anyone listening. Some are useful, like the services behind voice assistants, and some are spam.


Transistor filters out downloads from known bots, crawlers and podcast directory indexers, so they don't inflate your numbers. We keep improving this filtering. When we start blocking a new source of bot traffic, you may see your downloads drop from that day on, because those requests are no longer getting through. It means your stats are closer to your real audience.


If you'd like to know more about how we count downloads, see What counts as a podcast download? and Are Transistor's stats IAB compliant?


Still not sure?


If you can't explain a spike, get in touch and we'll take a look. For more detail on where web listeners come from, you can also connect Google Analytics: see How do I setup Google Analytics in my Transistor account?


If you have additional questions please reach out to us:


Updated on: 30/10/2026

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