Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

The classifieds industry has enjoyed consistent growth over the past three years, but the onset of the current recession has fueled an explosive increase in traffic. A recent Hitwise report shows that classifieds websites visits were up 84% year over year in February 2009, mainly attributed to increased traffic to Craigslist and localization of existing classifieds.

Here are some of the report’s key findings:

• Analysis of Craigslist’s demographics reveal that higher-income households are drawn to the site, but their main source of traffic comes from lower-income families, suggesting that the site is becoming more of a necessity for lower-income groups as the economy continues to weaken.
• The number of keywords in terms sending visits to classifieds sites tends to be longer than average for retail websites, presenting opportunities for lower cost and potentially higher qualified search traffic.
• Real Estate and Employment Classifieds are more fragmented. New players and new technologies contribute to a more level landscape.

While Craigslist remains top dog, smaller classifieds are also enjoying double digit growth, at 22% year over year in February 2009. Here are the main contributors:

Visits to classifieds verticals like employment, real estate, and automotive are also growing. Employment classifieds enjoyed a natural seasonal lift in visits in January and February and were up 16% year over year in February.

Traffic to employment classifieds is much more fragmented. Here is a chart depicting traffic to the top four employment classifieds sites in February:

The top four websites account for more than half of visits (56%). CareerBuilder is the number 1 player, with 22% of the visits.

The Hitwise report also speculated on the possible impact of eBay entering into the employment vertical. EBay recently announced that Kijiji classifieds offering would be rebranded eBay classifieds and this brand could be used to enter other markets. Does the idea of auctioning off a job sound foolish to you? Years ago many thought auctioning off cars would be, but today thousands are now on the auction block daily. Ebay could pose a potential threat to other classifieds providers by introducing an entirely new way of getting a job.

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