indeed.com algorithm favoring direct employers?
November 7th, 2007
Is it my imagination, or are organic job search results on Indeed.com weighing heavier toward direct employer content vs. job board content?
Take a look at the top results for a search of “engineering jobs in Austin“:
Not a job board in the bunch, where they used to own such real estate. Now, obviously this is one search (although I did many with similar results), and job boards do still come up on Page One for many searches, however this ain’t the same ol’ Indeed. Do some searches and decide for yourself.
In explanation of this discovery, co-founder Paul Forster said,
Our search engine is designed to learn from the behavior of job seekers, so our algorithm changes continually.
Frankly, if I’m a job board, I’m more than a little skeptical and ticked-off. After building a successful site the past 3 years on the backs of job site content, Indeed is likely evolving into what the founders envisioned: Organic results by direct employers; advertising revenue by job boards.
So what next?
For starters, maybe now they’ll be viewed more as a competitor. It’s certainly something to discuss in Orlando. But it may be a moot point. Indeed’s traffic is too significant now to stop advertising for most. And it doesn’t look like they need the content much anymore, anyway. Checkmate?
The main advantage job sites maintain is the almighty dollar. By representing the largest amount of revenue coming into Indeed by a large margin, they still hold some cards. Apathy doesn’t seem like an option.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Joel,
Did you happen to notice if these jobs had duplicate listings on the job boards as well as the corporate career sites? I’d like to know what sources show up in the main results page and which ones fall into the “duplicates” category. Is it random or are some sources favored over others?
November 7th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I would guess most of the ATS content is also on the job boards. Without official word or an inside source, it’s all speculation. I can only go on what I see and hear.
Paul Forster has called “pay-per-hire” the Holy Grail. Their own pay-per-applicant solution, which plugs into a variety of ATS’s, is one step toward this objective. Without traffic to the corporate Web sites, this vision can’t happen. So giving corporate sites an upper hand in results pages helps accomplish the ultimate goal.
I merely think job boards have to ask themselves some hard questions as they gradually appear to be getting squeezed out of the equation. They did, after all, make Indeed.com possible in the first place. How ironic they may not be around for the last laugh.
November 7th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
It looks like it depends on the search term used. I typed the following keywords:
“seo” “miami,”
“web designer” “miami,” and
“administrative” “miami”
I still found a bunch of job boards in the search results on the first page. Also, no Craigslist postings show up in any of the results.
November 7th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
For “sales” in “miami,” 6 out 10 listings on the first page are from corporate sites. For “sales” in “fort lauderdale,” its 5 out of 10.
November 7th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Joel is totally right on this one. The Job Boards have allowed themselves to be ‘Googled’. They erroneously believed the line in the sand was whether Indeed and its ilk would allow employers to post jobs to their site.
As long as Indeed didn’t cross that line, the big players would stay hooked up to the juice of buying listings and providing content for search. Meanwhile, more and more of their traffic is sourced from Indeed, and they can’t afford to quit Indeed; as the market would punish them too much.
The job boards didn’t get (or more likely were stymied by the prisoner’s dilemma of a diverse market) that if employers create their own job sites (with JobThread, etc) and advertise their listings on Indeed, they completely obviate the value of the job board.
It completely amazes me that the job industry could watch much of the publishing industry essentially destroyed by Google and search, and not recognize the same pattern in their backyard.
I’m not sure it is Checkmate yet — I think if Monster and CareerBuilder quit Indeed and its ilk tomorrow, they could potentially survive. But the window is *rapidly* closing.
November 7th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Joel,
Are you speaking in Orlando?
We have had out own issues with Indeed locally and grabbing old feeds, but hey, it’s a price you pay to tap into their traffic I guess.
November 7th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Greg … I’m attending Kennedy in Orlando, but not speaking.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I think this has more to do with the types of jobs and where they are online right now. I’m on Indeed every week and really haven’t noticed any other examples like this. Job boards are Indeed’s major clients so they aren’t going to diss us. We pay their salaries. What I’d really like to see Indeed add is the ability to filter results based on sources. The abliity to see all jobs from a particular job board is appealing to job seekers. ex: “just show me all jobs from this job board”
November 8th, 2007 at 9:39 am
On the other side of the coin, I agree having the ability to filter out the job boards would also be incredibly helpful as well. Providing only jobs coming directly from corporate sites would be extremely helpful to job seekers trying to make a direct connect with companies, not just dump a resume in another job board database. “ex: “just show me all jobs from company sites, not job boards”.
December 4th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Maybe I am missing something here.
There is a very simple reason why direct-hire spots appear first: those companies PAY Indeed to spider/index their job postings to the Indeed website.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:33 am
Its easy to say that the search should show up only jobs from corporate sites, However with the newer complex web technoligies , alomost all the sites generate dynamic links (URL’s) and hence it won’t be easy to spider all these dynamic pages and throw in search results, may be only 15-20 % of Non-Dynamic pages might come from corpoaret sites. Will need to define a new dynamic Crawler (may be specfic to jobs) to get these job pages only from corporate sites. I have one such crawler defined , however it needs some basic configuration after which it gets the required job pages (Dynamic / Non-Dynamic) for that website.
Configuration is required to control the relevant job pages only , however search engines can crawl everything initially and then filter only jobs related pages using some algorithm.
Does it sound feasible & sensible ?