‘Google For Jobs’ is launched in the UK
Last month, Google released its new job search feature in the UK. Although we knew the UK launch would happen after its success in the US, the official release date was still a mystery. As usual, Google quietly unveiled Google For Jobs without a big announcement.
How does Google For Jobs work?
Google For Jobs is a job search tool that aggregates job listings from job boards and recruitment websites and then displays them above other organic search results. The new feature is designed to help job seekers find open positions efficiently and quickly.
Improving jobseekers’ online experience
It provides a better approach to job hunting by allowing job seekers to filter the results by additional options such as location, date posted, title and employment type.
It also resolves the issue with job duplications, caused when recruiters post the same job across multiple job boards. Though a new Google feature will recognise them as the same job and display it as a unique listing, users can still view and apply for the job from the selected job website.
GFJ allows users to save a job and return to it later. It works across multiple synchronised devices, which means users can save a job on their mobile and send an application from their laptop. Users can also opt to receive alerts and updates about the latest job offers that match their criteria.
If no location is specified in the job search, Google automatically uses the location of the performed search to display the best match for nearby jobs. The new feature also pulls information from other websites like Glassdoor or Payscale, giving jobseekers more insight into the company by saving time on additional research.
Impact on the recruitment website traffic
Although it hasn’t been long since GFJ was launched in the UK, we already noticed an increase in web traffic on our job site, JobsTrackR.
Our organic traffic increased by 25% and, among all visits generated from GFJ, 29% of users applied for a job. Those visits showed the highest conversion for application submissions against other campaigns and traffic sources, where only 2-3% of users visiting the website submitted their CVs.
GFJ visits might be resulting in a high number of applications because users are already familiar with a job description. They land on the job site due to interest in the specific role, which increases the chance of them applying.
The graph below shows the importance of optimising a career website for Google For Jobs. Since we enhanced the recruitment site for GFJ, the traffic from job seekers using this feature was recorded in Google Analytics and is constantly increasing.
Our organic traffic increased by 25%
Summary
A new Google feature ‘Google For Jobs’ makes job hunting much easier and might encourage people to use search engines for job hunting more often than before.
It creates a great opportunity for any recruitment website to boost organic traffic, even if a site hadn’t previously received many visits from search engines. If job sites let Google understand the content of their sites for job postings, the chances of attracting job seekers to their sites will increase.
Interestingly, Indeed—one of the biggest job aggregators—doesn’t partner with GFJ, meaning their jobs aren’t displayed there. Whether this will impact recruitment agencies in choosing Indeed as a media partner for job adverts, remains to be seen.
