I saw my podictionary podcast download number skyrocket this week.  At first I thought it was due to an appearance by Grammar Girl on Oprah.  Grammar Girl was also featured in that USA Today article and I figured people were Googleing Grammar Girl but also finding podictionary.  But as time went on I saw the downloads stay high, while my website visits were static.  I figured people must be coming directly via iTunes.  As it turned out podictionary was featured a few levels down in iTunes (within the podcast > Society & Culture category).  I was pretty impressed at the power of this lowly inclusion (it was hard to find among all the iTunes pages) would drive 4 times as much listener traffic as did the iTunes front page exposure podictionary had just over a year ago.

Jane Farrow is now a producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) but she also has to her credit books based on her radio segment Wanted Words.

She said

And you thought you knew your own body! A captivating trove of facts and history that will amuse and fascinate.

Under a headline Get an earful of the offbeat, podictionary was featured on the front page of the Life section of USA Today.  They talked about a number of niche podcasts but podictionary was first and foremost. They said:

“In the digital world, there’s an audience for even the most obscure thing,” says Charles Hodgson, a Canadian writer whose podcast, Podictionary, examines the history and origins of one English word five days a week. Don’t laugh: His podcast has been downloaded 2.3 million times in less than two years. In a medium in which shows are lucky to attract a few thousand regular listeners, it’s a hit.

“It’s really short, only a few minutes a day, so it’s easy to listen to, and it’s fascinating to hear the history of words,” says John Mayson, 37, an Austin engineer who has been captivated by Podictionary since he got his iPod 18 months ago. He even dreams about it. “Name the topic, no matter how arcane or bizarre, and you’ll find a podcast on it.”