Wow, the vertical search engine space sure is heating up. On the heels of my last entry on SimplyHired, Indeed and WorkZoo, Business.com has launched Work.com.
According to their press release, Work.com is "the only job search engine dedicated to directly connecting job seekers with premium employers."
So, what defines a "premium employer"?
Someone who will pay for the traffic, of course. The new site will be "the first Cost-Per-Click (CPC) program of its kind, arming HR
departments with quantifiable data to measure ROI and make informed
decisions about where to spend their recruitment budget. Additionally,
the refined nature of the search experience for job seekers is intended
to result in fewer but more qualified candidates for advertisers."
I assumed it was just a matter of time before a job site implemented a PPC model for job postings, a la Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. So, kudos to them for actually doing it.
Time will tell if they can leverage enough traffic to make an impact on the Monster’s of the world – let alone the Googles – but at least they have a sturdy revenue-generating model, which none of the other vertical engines can claim.
Speaking of the competition … regarding Work.com, SimplyHired’s director of marketing Dave McClure said, "Work.com is trying to differentiate based on the ‘100% employer-only’
basis, although i think that’s a less compelling argument for the
job seeker, 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."
Ahh, gotta love competition. I’ll do a review of Work.com in the days to come. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the current vertical search engine arms race. Almost makes me miss the Soviet Union.
Popularity: 2% [?]
May 6th, 2005 at 8:22 pm
Joel, have you noticed that Work.com uses some interesting practices in driving search engine traffic to its site? They set up custom URLs that include employer names, like:
http://www.work.com/jobs_Sears
So they come up on page one in search results for queries such as “Sears jobs.” Then, on the page under each job, notice that the URLs listed aren’t real? But clearly they include the company name and the word “jobs” to increase their relevance in search engine results, right?
I don’t have a problem with Work.com because they eventually drive traffic back to employers’ Web sites, but there are some cases where Work.com pages actually appear higher than the company careers Web site in search engine results!