This news is a bit discouraging, and if it turns out to be true then Apple needs to get this fixes ASAP. One of the things we did with the Podcast Awards site was to invest heavily in the engine that was used to track voting, nominations etc, and put in a multi-tier verification system that went well beyond people voting, and manually verifying their votes.
The number of people that tried to beat the system was amazing to watch, and believe it when I say this, they really tried hard. No system is completely fool proof. You do the best you can with the technology/finances at your disposal. So I am sure Apple will fix this in the near future.
Popularity on the iTunes list comes at a bandwidth price, so please re-consider clicking the subscribe button 5 times for your favorite shows, as those clicks could click them off the air from the added bandwidth demand.
I am going to be comparing those listed in the top 100 with the data we collected on the groups that tried to influence voting and nominations over at Podcast Awards, and see if I can see any trends as I have a short list of what I call over excited listener bases that would do about anything to influence show rankings. [Podcasting News]