Here’s something I’ve been trying to sort out for months…
Years ago, I started using OP3 (worth reading, it’s a short front-page “what is it?”) prefixes on all four of my shows. I wanted more-nearly IAB standards-compliant statistics than I can get from my self-hosted shows’ Wordpress plugin software, and I really like the idea that OP3 makes the data public so that people (like podnews.net) can look at the aggregate data which helps OPEN podcasting be healthy.
For example, here’s the OP3 stats for Podtalk— prepare to be underwhelmed at how my show performs…
https://op3.dev/show/a93eaf0a-b175-5200-8a21-33dc673b4899
That’s the setup, what’s the problem?
For many months, the Movers Mindset show’s OP3 statics were sort of frozen. It would show downloads/plays in the day/week/month statistics… but it wasn’t showing activity for my recent episodes—by “recent” I mean the last few that I published in early 2024 and then the new ones I’ve started publishing in 2025.
Eventually, I emailed James Cridland (the editor of Podnews) as a last grasp—because there’s no clear way to reach anyone at OP3. (OP3 is a one-person, volunteer-run thing… don’t panic, the parts that cost money are funded by a few of the open-web podcasting big kids.) He copied in the person who runs OP3…
Hi Craig - I took a look at your show. Looks like OP3 hasn’t been noticing changes to your feed for some time, due to a feed URL change that was made back in March 2024 and OP3’s integration with the directory used under the hood, the podcast index. Honestly, I should tweak my reliance on the index for guids and feeds as well. In any case, should be fixed for new downloads to your show.
For historical downloads, the downloads are still measured in OP3, just unallocated to your show. I can rerun matching, but it’s a long and resource-intensive process. Let me rerun for downloads in April at the very least, and I’ll let you know when that’s finished.
To be candid, I don’t fully understand what he’s talking about with OP3 not noticing my Movers Mindset show’s feed URL changes — I did change the feed URL, but there’s a redirect, and the new URL is showing in all directories… so, as he 'fessed up, it’s something in OP3.
Uh, why mention this?
First, showing our process is what we do around here. 
There’s always been the question of: are these sorts of redirection-based 3rd party stats tracking “safe” — in the sense of when things go wonky, does your show still play. YES. All that went wonky was the stats showing with OP3. (Who listens where?)
Finally, and most importantly…
If you have a problem: Keep poking at it, and keep asking questions.
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