Google Sounds the Death Knell for Job Search Sites?

July 25, 2006

Finding jobs has become considerably easier since the days of poring over classified ads and mailing resumes out across the nation like a hungry fisherman hoping for a nibble. Google though, has taken it up a notch by providing a default job search service that may soon upset the apple cart of all the smaller job search providers by dropping prices for job postings through the floor.

How Low are GoogleBase’s Job Posting Prices?

Try “FREE!” Google now offers a job search function integrated into their search results when a user enters a query for “Marketing Jobs,” “Accounting Jobs,” or some other generic field. Instead of crawling postings from other job search portals like some of my favorites, simplyhired.com and indeed.com, Google is pulling results from their free GoogleBase.

Haven’t heard of Google Base? Many outside the Internet and marketing worlds haven’t either. I suppose it is Google’s shot at all the classifed traffic rolling around on the web. Sites like Craigslist have been doing well pulling visitors with bare-bones user interfaces and word-of-mouth marketing.

Since Google Base is free, I am honestly surprised more people aren’t using it besides the “marketers” filling Google base with junk. Google could fix that by using their new Google checkout to charge people a dollar per listing. I guarantee you 90% of the junk streaming into that database would dry up if people even had to pay one penny to submit.

Google Job Search Still has Some Limitations

Don’t warm up the fat lady yet, though. Try Google’s search results for a variety of jobs. Notice that the box only shows up for the most generic job searches, and the results are often far below the quality of the tiniest portals. Also notice that Google has not localized the job search results – a very important niche. However, this is probably intentional. Perhaps Google is waiting for a particular threshold of relevant searches before the box appears.

Companies posting jobs will eventually catch on to Googlebase, and no amount of marketing by competing job sites can beat the default placement given to their own products. This could either force companies to protect their brands by improving their USP (unique selling proposition) and by adding greater value to the user’s experience, or the unofficial “google jobs” will bring Google closer to uncompetitive practice suits. Those who enjoy market effeciencies and greater value for the dollar would surely prefer the former.