I bet if you asked Intel if they were upset in any way that Indeed took a job description from their website and made some money from it but delivered someone who was hired, Intel would be tickled pink.

What stands out to me is that Indeed has made a calculated decision to maybe take it a bit too far and they are fine with it because early in the game we can all see that they are out to a commanding lead. It’s still early so we’ll see the long term effect soon enough. A few tweaks to the Google magic sauce and Indeed’s good fortune could change, but I don’t think that will be for a while.

The real issue is for employers to understand that their job content is valuable and they have done a not so good job disseminating the content to the proper audiences, relying solely on job boards for years and now vertical search has taken the next step. Employers need to get in the game on their own, find out where their jobs are and make conscious decisions to opt/out if necessary. Employers need to embrace SEO practices that get their content out on its own so it competes directly with the job boards, but they’ll need to work on their content first and that is a whole new set of problems.

It will be interesting to see it all unfold. Good stuff Joel.

If job boards distribute their jobs to Indeed and do not participate in a paid sponsored search program, Indeed has every right to figure out other ways to leverage the page view to generate revenue. Obviously, by displaying the job description (or a some portion of it), they will invariably reduce the number of click-throughs coming to the job board, because the additional content will help the jobseeker further identify if this is the right job for them prior to clicking through. However, since the traffic was free to begin with for the job board, one has less ability to be critical of how the jobs are displayed; beggars can’t be choosers.

But, in the case of a job board who is participating in sponsored search, this can actually save money because by displaying the job description, it in essence weeds out less serious candidates, thereby making each click-through more valuable. The jobseeker is now been screened and has a greater likelihood of applying. A job board’s primary goal is to acquire more resumes and generate more applicants for its’ customers. Job boards don’t mind paying for unique visitors who actually intend to apply. A click-through without a corresponding apply is only effective for a fleeting piece of branding, until the jobseeker hits the back button and returns to Indeed.com. GoJobs, a PPC vendor who also provides an aggregated search functionality, charges job boards on a per-apply basis: the entire job description is displayed to the jobseeker – the jobseeker clicks the apply button to be sent to our site – thus reducing the number of wasted paid clicks and ensuring that the click-to-apply ratio is higher.

Ideally, if Indeed starts selling advertising around the job boards’ classified listings, or even embeds keywords inside the actual job description (i.e. selling the keyword “java” in the body every Indeed job posting that has the word “java” in it, which, when clicked, goes to a master’s degree program in Java or a company who specializes in Java development), could they reduce the sponsored search costs of job boards, thereby making it cheaper to advertise with Indeed?

Indeed is trying to provide value to the jobseeker – this feature is in the best interest of the jobseeker; it is cleaner, easier, and saves time.

At the end of the day, if job boards don’t like it, then they’ll simply not distribute their jobs there and forgo the free\paid traffic and exposure, right? The market will decide.

It seems you’re thinking the situation with ‘opt-out’ is ok (as opposed to ‘opt-in) and that some publishers should make an informed decision to opt-out. That’s the same as a open vs. closed system. The large players will opt-out because they have the ability to rank higher, and all the small guys will be glad to get a higher ranking and more views by staying in. The open system wins because of scope.

Or, do you think the 1,000 character issue is a big one. If it was 100 characters, do you think that make a difference?

Bottom line, if someone wants to work at Phillip Morris they will search directly on that company’s website. If someone wants to work in Milwaukee though, an aggregated information from Google, Google Base, or a vertical aggregator will serve that job seekers preference better.

I think at the end of the day, publishers have to ask, “Is this vertical search?”

I don’t think it is and by definition that’s what these sites are supposed to do. If these sites were set up as previews of job postings via snippets on their own pages, then maybe it would different. It’s not the reality.

Publishers need to know this is going on if they don’t already. They have a choice of being on Indeed and other verticals or not. It should at least be an educated one.

From what I’ve seen, they’re taking an excerpt of the posting and running it on their site. That’s no different and just as legal as when Cheezhead or any other blog includes an excerpt from an article that they saw on another site without the explicit, written permission of that site owner. You don’t have permission to run that excerpt but you don’t need it as long as it is an excerpt as that falls under the fair use exception in the copyright laws. But if you re-publish more than an excerpt, such as the entire article, then you’re in violation and so would be Indeed were it to re-publish an entire job posting without permission.

The grey area, of course, is in the middle. Are they clearly okay at 1,000 characters? Maybe. What about 2,000 characters? What about 3,000 characters? At some point you cross the line. Where that point is will and should be open to debate.