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The popular podcast app has introduced “Instant Search” as a feature which CEO Marco Arment calls “the next step in Overcast’s search evolution.”
Arment says over 80% of podcasts are added to Overcast by searching, with the vast majority as searches for a specific podcast by name (rather than searching for generic keywords, such as “business”). And, he says good search is a critical, differentiating feature of any podcast app. “I’m not satisfied if the podcast you’re looking for is somewhere in the middle of a long list — I want it to be the first one, displayed quickly, after typing the fewest characters possible. I’ve been building toward this by analyzing years of popularity statistics and anonymous search data.”
Arment says, “Instant Search combines a small local cache with a highly optimized search service to give the most relevant results immediately as you type, even after only a single letter. It’s a dramatic, delightful improvement to a critical, frequently used feature. This was a lot of fun to build, and I’m proud of it.”
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