Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

I recently asked a prospect, who happened to be a start-up, niche job board, So, what’s your strategy for driving traffic?

The answer to this question usually ranges from local, offline advertising like radio and billboards to “We’re not really sure.” Considering the fact they call me, search engine optimization and marketing is typically on the shortlist of immediate plans.

This prospect, although interested in leveraging the usual suspects – Google, Yahoo!, MSN – was the first prospect to ever say that they were counting on the verticals – Indeed, SimplyHired, Jobster (we ain’t madatcha Goldberg) – to drive the traffic they needed to thrive.

Hmm. So, this begged the questions: 1) Does the emergence of the verticals mean an extension of The Long Tail for job sites to mind numbing metrics – even more so than they already are? Most experts put the number of job sites at 45,000, give or take a few thousand. 2) Could the world be at 100,000-plus job sites in 10 years? And 3) Is counting on the verticals for traffic a sound foundation for a business?

In short, the Long Tail exists, in many ways, because there is a Google. 4) Does vertical search make The Tail endless? 5) Or is it already endless? 6) And if The Tail is endless, does that mean endless opportunity for the verticals?

Geez … so many questions. I gotta stop listening to OK Computer and get some sleeep.

Popularity: 3% [?]