Whether taking a quick walk, diving into an ambitious cooking project or driving in the car, people are listening to podcasts in more places. We redesigned Google Podcasts with this in mind, making it easier to discover and listen to podcasts wherever people are listening. 

Today we’re introducing Google Podcasts Manager, a new tool to help podcasters gain insight into the evolving habits of podcast listeners so they can better understand their audiences and reach them across Google products.

Podcasts Manager also provides anonymized device analytics that show what percentage of your audience listens on phones, tablets, desktop computers and smart speakers. This data can help podcasters better understand and respond to changing listening behavior. For example, you might discover that the majority of your listeners access your show on a smart speaker. This might mean you add shorter form content for listening on-the-go, or develop more family-friendly options for consumption in an open space.

We’ll continue to build on these features to help audio publishers grow sustainable businesses, connect with listeners and create podcasts people love.

Editor’s note: What impact can AI and machine learning have on journalism? That is a question the Google News Initiative is exploring through a partnership with Polis, the international journalism think tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The following post is written by Mattia Peretti, who manages the program, called JournalismAI.

In the global survey we conducted last year about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by news organizations, most respondents highlighted the urgent need to educate and train their newsroom on the potential offered by machine learning and other AI-powered technologies. Improving AI literacy was seen as vital to change culture and improve understanding of new tools and systems:

The message from newsrooms was loud and clear. So we decided to do something about it. That’s why we’re announcing a free training course produced by JournalismAI in collaboration with VRT News and the Google News Initiative. 

This Introduction to Machine Learning is built by journalists, for journalists, and it will help answer questions such as: What is machine learning? How do you train a machine learning model? What can journalists and news organizations do with it and why is it important to use it responsibly?

The course is available in 17 different languages on the Google News Initiative Training Center. By logging in, you can track your progress and get a certificate when you complete the course. The Training Center also has a variety of other courses to help you find, verify and tell news stories online.

It’s a tough time for journalists and news organizations worldwide, as they try to assess the impact that COVID-19 will have on the business and editorial side of the industry. With JournalismAI, we want to play our role in helping to minimize costs and enhance opportunities for the industry through these new technologies. This course complements our recently launched collaborative experiment, as well as our effort to highlight profiles and experiments that show the transformative potential of AI and machine learning in shaping the journalist, and the journalism, of the future.

At the end of the course, you’ll find a list of recommended resources, produced by journalism and technology experts across the world, that have been instrumental in designing our Introduction to Machine Learning and will help you dive even deeper in the world of AI and automation. 

And we are not done. After this course, and the previous training module with strategic suggestions on AI adoption, we are planning to design more training resources on AI and machine learning for journalists later this year. Sign up for the JournalismAI newsletter to stay updated.

Since COVID-19 began, we’ve heard from our retail and brand manufacturing partners that they’re hungry for more insights on how consumer interests are changing, given fluctuations in consumer demand. We see these changes reflected in how people are searching on Google. Last month, there were spikes in search interest for household supplies and jigsaw puzzles as people spent more time at home. This month we’ve seen surging interest for sewing machines and baking materials in the U.S., and tetherball sets and chalk in the United Kingdom and Australia. 

Businesses are using a variety of resources to understand changing consumer interests—including Google Trends, social listening, surveys, and their own data—in order to help make decisions on the fly. But if they don’t know what to look for, there isn’t an easy way to understand which product categories are gaining in popularity, and might pose an opportunity.

That’s why we’re launching a rising retail categories tool on Think with Google. It surfaces fast-growing, product-related categories in Google Search, the locations where they’re growing, and the queries associated with them. This is the first time we’ve provided this type of insight on the product categories that people are searching for. 

When we previewed the data with a group of businesses, they had lots of creative ideas for how they might apply it—whether for content creation, promotional efforts, or even new products and services. Here were some of their ideas for how it could help:

• Content creation: A cookware company noticed that “flour” was a growing category in the United States. The team was inspired to explore partnering with a famous local chef to create engaging content about recipes that incorporate flour. 

• Promotion: A jewelry and accessories company noted rising interest in products in the “free weights” category, so the team thought they might partner with fitness influencers who could help promote their products. Similarly, an online business said it would regularly reference the data to inform which products to feature on its homepage throughout the pandemic. 

• Product ideas: An apparel company with a fast and flexible production model said its team would use this data to inspire new product line ideas.

For the next few months, we’ll update the tool with fresh data every day and hope this will help businesses of all sizes find new pockets of consumer interest. For additional resources and insights, sign up for the Think with Google newsletter.