Google has dropped the playable podcast search result rich snippets. 9to5Google reported this first, and there is a bit of confusion around what exactly Google removed. Google seems to have removed the recent episodes' playable rich results for podcasts, where Google would show the recent podcasts under a specific search result.
The podcast rich results launched in 2017, I have some screenshots here but this image from 9to5Google shows the before and after in a clear and concise manner:
Here is another version I screen captured from 2019,
Before:
And now it is gone but it has the carousel:
Here is some of the SEO chatter on this change:
It's the functionality for playing the episode that was in the SERPs that was removed (I think). I never used that, and didn't really see it much tbh.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 18, 2023
In that case I take back my "wow"
— Mordy Oberstein πΊπ¦ (@MordyOberstein) January 18, 2023
Likewise, I read an article on this topic this morning yet I'm still seeing them. Matter of time I guess?
— Azeem (@AzeemDigital) January 18, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.