July 24, 2009

Google AdWords Location Extensions to Dynamically Add Addresses

Google AdWords is introducing Location Extensions. The feature allows local businesses to connect their business address to their search ads. They can either connect it via Google's Local Business Center or add it manually in AdWords.

AdWords will then include the address automatically. This feature is being rolled out, so if you don't have it right away, hang on, it's coming.

With the new feature, local business ads in AdWords will no longer have a separate ad format. Existing ads will run as they have until they are edited. Once they are edited, they will be converted to the traditional text ad. It will look the same when published and it will appear in the same places, but the format will just be different.

What do you think of Location Extensions? Let us know by leaving a comment.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

July 22, 2009

Rumor: Yahoo! Might Sell Job Search Site HotJobs

Reuters is reporting that Yahoo! is considering a sale of job search site HotJobs. Purportedly they are seeking a buyout from a competitor such as Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com.

The rumor is floating at an interesting time. In the past week, chatter has been stirred up about Microsoft and Yahoo! once again talking about a search deal. If Yahoo! truly is looking to get out of the search game, then dumping HotJobs makes sense.

And although Microsoft has been focusing on winning over niche areas of search, I guess job search isn't one of them. Otherwise, they would seem a more obvious suitor.

What do you think? Should Yahoo! shed HotJobs? Share your opinion in the comments section below.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 4:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 25, 2009

Yahoo!'s Hot Jobs to Offer Performance-Based Recruitment Solution

Job search site HotJobs, which is owned by Yahoo!, has announced a new performance-based offering for recruiters. Human resources professionals will now be able to pay-per-candidate, similar to pay-per-click.

With the offering, recruiters buy credits, but are only charged when candidates click on a listing and apply for the job. If credits go unused, they can be shifted to another listing. Additionally, recruiters will be able to set criteria to filter out candidates that aren't right for the job.

The new offering is poised to not just save human resource departments money but also to streamline the recruiting process as well.

"Recruiters are being asked to find top talent using fewer resources than ever, and Yahoo!'s Pay Per Candidate model gives them the tools to increase the accountability of their listings," said Chris Merritt, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! HotJobs. "With recruiters facing resume overload in today's job market, the Pay Per Candidate solution will allow them to spend their time and budget on only the best candidates."

Advanced Medical Personnel Services has tested the program and like what they see.

"Pay Per Candidate not only saves me time, but money as well," said Kyle Carey, director of Internet Marketing, Advanced Medical Personnel Services, Inc. "Because of how I set up the product, my team spends its time reviewing only relevant resumes. I don't pay for resumes that don't meet my criteria, only those that meet our standards determined by our questionnaire."

HotJobs sees 16 million unique visitors a month via their site, the Yahoo! Network and the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium. It's easy to see how this could make quite an impact on the human resources industry.

What do you think of the introduction of performance-based marketing to job search sites? Share your impressions in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 25, 2008

Yahoo Gets REAL About Job Searches

In an effort to improve access to job seekers and assist recruiters, Yahoo announced today the launch of "R.E.A.L., a patent pending search ranking system that is based on Relevance, Engagement, Availability and Location," a company press release detailed.

Yahoo explained the process thus:

R.E.A.L. is an industry-first search algorithm that builds on an innovative set of principles derived from Yahoo!'s research in Web search technology. Leveraging Yahoo!'s behavioral targeting and search optimization strengths to rank job listings based on user engagement, R.E.A.L. has moved Yahoo! HotJobs' job search rankings beyond the traditional category-based, date-sorted experience. With the launch of R.E.A.L., "applies" per job listing have increased by 25 percent, a key success metric for recruiters.

"R.E.A.L. is a key pillar in our strategy to deliver the best in performance and value for recruitment advertisers," said Jeff Kinder, senior vice president and general manager, Yahoo! HotJobs. "Yahoo! has shown that relevance matters in search results, and it's powerful to apply Yahoo!'s search technology to HotJobs and see immediate and significant performance improvements. We believe Yahoo! HotJobs has a distinct advantage as online recruitment evolves and insights and technology play increasingly important roles."

The principles of R.E.A.L. are described in a newly released "Playbook" for recruiters, a compilation of best practices for posting, editing and managing job listings, designed to deliver optimal quality and performance. By aligning the goals of recruiters and job candidates, R.E.A.L. creates an indispensable experience that is defined by four critical characteristics of high-performance job listings:

R - Relevance: Matching text in job titles and descriptions to the keywords candidates use

E - Engagement: Measuring how well candidates respond to the job listing

A - Availability: Determining that the positions displayed are still unfilled

L - Location: Showing jobs in a location of interest to the candidate

These four characteristics are part of an insights-driven search algorithm that will continually improve on itself.

"We've started following the principles of R.E.A.L. and have already seen a significant increase in the number of applies per job listing," said Kathryn Jordan, chief financial officer, Fishpond Recruiting. "By applying Yahoo! HotJobs' best practices, we've not only expanded our candidate pool but we're seeing matches with high-quality candidates that are far more relevant to our job openings."

R.E.A.L. also benefits Yahoo!'s Newspaper Consortium partners who have implemented Yahoo! HotJobs as their exclusive online recruitment solution. R.E.A.L. includes location-based job searching features which enhance the ability to narrow or broaden relevant job search results by zip code, city, nearby cities, full metro areas, or entire states. The Newspaper Consortium now reaches 30 percent of all U.S. daily newspapers, and Yahoo! HotJobs has launched co-branded career sites serving more than 425 newspapers with strong local presences.

As part of its effort to be the "must buy" solution for recruitment advertisers, Yahoo! HotJobs has increased job candidate traffic by more than 50 percent over the last year while competitors remained largely flat. As a result, Yahoo! HotJobs has become the fastest growing Web site among the leading job boards and has surpassed Monster.com in the U.S.(1)

For more information about R.E.A.L., please visit http://hotjobsresources.com/ and click on the 'Library' section.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:47 PM | Permalink

March 7, 2007

Yahoo Using Craigslist, Not HotJobs, to Find Employees

ZD Net reporter Donna Bogatin wrote an interesting article today about how Yahoo HotJObs is using Craigslist to find candidates for its own job openings.

Bogatin questions the point of Yahoo HotJobs' claim of reaching over three times the readers of the top 100 newspapers in the United States, if they need to outsource their own hiring needs.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:58 AM | Permalink

July 14, 2006

Newspapers To Team Up With Yahoo To Create An Online Classifieds Network

Reuters reports on a Business Week article that shows how a "loose consortium of newspaper publishers" are in discussions with Yahoo's HotJobs to build an online classifieds network. For Yahoo, this can help increase the popularity of HotJobs and for the newspapers, it can help them drive more ad dollars, but this time, online ad dollars.

Quote from the Business Week article that shows the importance on the newspaper side;

Newspaper companies would build a network within what is one of the Web's top destinations and win a crucial concession in today's search-engine economy: getting a cut of the ads sold around search results of their content. It's a sore spot for publishers that this doesn't happen now.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:25 AM | Permalink

July 12, 2005

Yahoo Confirms HotJobs Crawling - What's Old Is New In Job Search

Matt Marshall from the San Jose Mercury News offers up an interesting read in Yahoo to 'copy' jobs to beef up its listings that takes a look at the new HotJobs database of open-web content that we blogged about last week. The new Yahoo/HotJobs service officially launched this morning. Here's the official announcement.

One comment about Matt's article. He writes, "Job scraping is fairly new."

I would argue that job scraping (for example, crawling company web sites for employment listings) would fall into the, "what's old is new" again category since a major online employment database once provided this type of service.

Officially launched in 2000, a site/database called FlipDog.com crawled the open web looking for job listings on company web sites. Here's how FlipDog described itself:

FlipDog.com crawls the World Wide Web and links to job openings found on employer Web sites.

Five years ago there was even talk (similar to what Matt discusses in his article) about FlipDog doing for free what others charge for.

Interestingly, in May 2001 TMP Worldwide (the parent of HotJobs competitor, Monster.com) acquired FlipDog from the now defunct WhizBang Labs who originally developed the job search engine to showcase their data extraction technology.

Today, FlipDog.com redirects to Monster.com. One has to wonder if Monster.com will either resurrect the service or use/enhance the FlipDog technology to integrate open-web job listings into their primary database.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:22 PM | Permalink

July 7, 2005

Yahoo HotJobs Enhanced By New Job Engine

Several sources including News.com and the Yahoo Search Blog point out that HotJobs (a Yahoo company) is now using Yahoo's web crawler to enhance HotJobs own database with job listings posted on various sites and job boards across the internet. Yahoo calls the new feature its Job Engine.

This is similar to what Simply Hired and Indeed.com are already providing. In fact, both of these services include listings posted on HotJobs itself. Feedster also offers a jobs database that culls employment opportunities found in RSS feeds.

Note to Yahoo: It would be useful if you joined Simply Hired and Indeed.com in providing the underlying source site or database for each listing. This info can help a job seeker make sure their search is comprehensive but can alert them to resources they might not know about.

By the way, another way to access Indeed.com's database is via the "jobs" tab on Clusty. This way you can take advantage of Clusty's dynamic clustering to help spot potential job opportunities. Indeed.com and Clusty began their partnership in May.

Posted by Gary Price at 10:35 AM | Permalink

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