The vertical search engine race continues to be a hot topic within Internet recruiting circles.
Indeed, probably my personal favorite at this point, has penned agreements to co-brand their search technology with Info.com and Clusty.com, both of which are secondary search engines. Providing search technology to other search engines is a page right out of Google’s handbook, who still continue to power search for sites like AOL. It’ll be interesting to see how this tactic evolves for Indeed.
SimplyHired seems to be taking the route of building connections that enhance the job seeker experience. They’ve recently partnered with LinkedIn, for example, to take advantage of the business networking service’s clout. They also allow users to rank job listings via a star system similar to Amazon’s product reviews.
WorkZoo is heavy on the technical side of the equation. They have a clever map highlighting where the most jobs are throughout the U.S. (Indeed has a similar graphic, but you have to dig a little.) They also have a page dedicated to Webmasters, in expectation that they’re technology will spread through Web sites all over, a la Google as well. (Indeed also has Webmaster tools, but one must register to access them.)
In the battle for eyeballs, Indeed seems to be the current front-runner, with WorkZoo and SimplyHired trailing respectfully (source: Alexa traffic details).
I’m still pretty skeptical of any of these sites becoming financially successful and believe the end goal is to sell themselves off to one of the Big Three search engines. That said, Google had originally hoped to sell to Yahoo! when they launched. We all know how that turned out.
So why do I prefer Indeed up to this point? Bear in mind, it’s very early in this game, however, I like where Indeed is going with their partnerships, intuitive e-mail alerts, search refinement technology and the various RSS options they give users. There’s something for everyone.
WorkZoo has some nice technology, but I’m not sure how that will resonate with the masses. I’m also not a fan of their site’s look-and-feel or their name. 1997 anyone?
SimplyHired has an appealing, West Coast-like general appeal, but a lot of work still ahead of them to catch up with the other two.
May 5th, 2005 at 4:12 am
hey Joel -
you forgot Work.com, which officially announced they were entering the race earlier today (er, yesterday i guess since it’s after midnight). unofficially, they’ve been around for a few months, but they did roll out a few new features.
re: distinctive features — i’d say Indeed’s results clustering is kind of interesting, and WorkZoo has a neat method of visualization. Work.com is trying to differentiate based on the ‘100% employer-only’ basis, although i think that’s a less compelling argument for the jobseeker, since many jobs are proliferating on smaller niche-focused boards. that said, both Indeed and we at SimplyHired index jobs from employer sites as well. so when they say ‘100% employer-direct’ that also means ‘0% boards-direct’ which probably isn’t such a great thing to boast about if you’re a search engine aiming to show people all the jobs out there. still, they have done some good work on jobtitle / occupation taxonomy so kudos there.
on the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ front, look for Simply Hired to rollout RSS later this week and email alerts by the end of the month. while we give kudos to Indeed and WorkZoo for getting those out first, we view these as core features and not really differentiators. we also have some new stuff planned that will be *quite* different, however…
still, i agree with you the field is in its infancy, and we all have the challenge of long-term viability to prove out. but it’s a long night of poker and we’ve only just played the first hand.
lots more to come — hope you keep watching :)
- dave mcclure
http://www.simplyhired.com
May 16th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
Don’t forget about the regional players!!
Fetchster.com is a Minnesota Job Search Engine - spidering the sites of Minnesota employers in much the same way that Google spiders websites all over the web.
We’re 100% employer direct, which means that we’re also 0% board direct. Don’t get me wrong - there are a ton of great jobs on the job boards.
Our approach has been to offer a service on the regional level. We have positions in over 100 cities and towns across Minnesota. These jobs are at companies that are headquartered here, or companies who have continuing operations in Minnesota.
By going 100% employer direct we are missing certain opportunities. But, we’re also getting some of the most interesting jobs available - jobs that aren’t often found on any of the big boards. We currently spider about 80 companies in Minnesota, but more good things are coming: we have well over 100 companies left to add to our index, and that number grows each month.
We have RSS and job alerts, so we’re ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ too.
The most exciting part about this field is that it’s still wide open. Job seekers are going to be treated to a lot of different options, from regional sites like Fetchster.com to national sites like Indeed and SimplyHired.
I agree with Dave - the VJSE field is still in the infancy stages. But, as with all new markets, we’ve already begun to see some great innovations.
Adam Gedde
http://www.fetchster.com