craigslist puts smackdown on verticals

Thu, Oct 19, 2006

Word on the street is Craigslist sent cease and desist letters to Jobster, Simply Hired, Indeed and other vertical job search engines to stop spidering their job content.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Join Our Mailing List

We're on Facebook!

Cheezhead | Promote Your Page Too

Job Search

This post was written by:

Joel Cheesman - who has written 1471 posts on Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion.

One of the most widely-read bloggers on emerging recruitment issues in the world. Accomplishments include being named Recruiting.com’s Best Technology Recruitment Blog and Best Recruiting Blog. Joel's been featured in Fast Company magazine, BusinessWeek Magazine, Resumes for Dummies, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal and more. Plug into Joel via Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, iTunes, YouTube or Flickr.

Contact the author

4 Comments For This Post

Marc Drees Says:
October 20th, 2006 at 4:21 am

Did Craigslist felt timing was righ after John Sumser’s recent hit on the verticals?

Yannick Says:
October 20th, 2006 at 6:12 am

Vertical job engines were’nt following instructions from craiglist’s robots.txt, so that’s logical, isn’t it ?

Jonathan Duarte Says:
October 20th, 2006 at 3:00 pm

The fact that Craigslist is invoking their user license agreement and website robots.txt agreement is should not be a shock to anyone. If it is, they don’t know, and haven’t worked with Craigslist.

What will it mean to the verticals? Nothing!
It’s actually a win for Monster and CareerBuilder, because without the additional jobs from Craigslist, there are fewer jobs to compete with their dominance.

What does it mean for Craigslist… unfortunately, in my opinion, I think it was too early for them to pull the plug.
They were just starting to get national awareness in the HR offices of corporate america. Larger employers are just now starting to consider craigslist a Recruitment advertising option, in other areas outside of just San Fran, LA, and NY.

Pulling the plug on some of their “traffic” means that Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster probably believe they are better off enforcing their user rules, and robots rules, than building the brand through competitive challenges. Craigslist has always grown organically, as well as through SEO, but killing free traffic is like getting delisted from Google.

Julian Felstead Says:
October 23rd, 2006 at 10:32 am

We did not get one!

But then we are the premier UK and Ireland Jobs Search Engine and only crawl sites that we have asked permission from. That’s polite isn’t it!

Want to know the best kept secret about us – we have more jobs than any other jobs search engine in the UK and Ireland ….shhhhhh

(Must be because we offer great value for money with our ppc system – advert ends here!).

I agree with Jonathan Duarte though why should craigslist object to what was probably a lot of free traffic.

Marc Drees Says:
October 20th, 2006 at 4:21 am
Did Craigslist felt timing was righ after John Sumser’s recent hit on the verticals?
Yannick Says:
October 20th, 2006 at 6:12 am
Vertical job engines were’nt following instructions from craiglist’s robots.txt, so that’s logical, isn’t it ?
Jonathan Duarte Says:
October 20th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
The fact that Craigslist is invoking their user license agreement and website robots.txt agreement is should not be a shock to anyone. If it is, they don’t know, and haven’t worked with Craigslist.

What will it mean to the verticals? Nothing!
It’s actually a win for Monster and CareerBuilder, because without the additional jobs from Craigslist, there are fewer jobs to compete with their dominance.

What does it mean for Craigslist… unfortunately, in my opinion, I think it was too early for them to pull the plug.
They were just starting to get national awareness in the HR offices of corporate america. Larger employers are just now starting to consider craigslist a Recruitment advertising option, in other areas outside of just San Fran, LA, and NY.

Pulling the plug on some of their “traffic” means that Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster probably believe they are better off enforcing their user rules, and robots rules, than building the brand through competitive challenges. Craigslist has always grown organically, as well as through SEO, but killing free traffic is like getting delisted from Google.
Julian Felstead Says:
October 23rd, 2006 at 10:32 am
We did not get one!

But then we are the premier UK and Ireland Jobs Search Engine and only crawl sites that we have asked permission from. That’s polite isn’t it!

Want to know the best kept secret about us – we have more jobs than any other jobs search engine in the UK and Ireland ….shhhhhh

(Must be because we offer great value for money with our ppc system – advert ends here!).

I agree with Jonathan Duarte though why should craigslist object to what was probably a lot of free traffic.

Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion