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Google Penguin 2 and the Jobs in Ireland

Did you hear Google released a major update to Penguin 2 on Friday? Matt Cutts (the head of Google’s Webspam team) recently confirmed on his blog that Penguin 2.0 is now live.

So let’s see how did the Google Penguin 2 update affect our Irish online recruitment industry. Here is the search result page for the word “Jobs” made in Google.ie.

Make sure if you do this search yourself that you are not logged in into Google yourself, have removed the Google cookie, etc – so that you do not see the Google’s “Personalised” search result for you.

Here is the new google.ie ranking for the search word “jobs”:

  1. Jobs.ie
  2. IrishJobs.ie
  3. FindAJob.ie
  4. Indeed.ie
  5. RecruitIreland.com
  6. Monster.ie
  7. Fas.ie
  8. Ie.JobRapido.com
  9. JobsToday.ie
  10. Twitter.com/jobs

So what can we conclude from the list of the sites that a are on the first page for the phrase jobs? By comparing what we have used to see there before the Google Penguin 2 update we can see what sites have been affected. Let’s start with the sites not affected by the update:

The SAON Group web sites leading with the purchased Jobs.ie site on top and their original IrishJobs.ie is steadily on top.

Nothing changed there for years. In fact may years. The last change there actually when Jobs.ie overtook IrishJobs.ie. If my memory serves me correctly that was towards the end of 2005. Very shortly after that IrishJobs.ie bought Jobs.ie.

So since 2005 the first two search results for the search for “jobs” have not changed in Ireland. So is Google doing much really with all these Panda, Penguin & Penguin 2 “updates”? Well in the last 7 years the results on top are not changing at all. Or does IrishJobs.ie & Jobs.ie have so good SEO specialists to keep them on top for all these years? It must be one of those.

The next three slots are Findajob.ie (aka LoadzaJobs.ie), Indeed.ie and Monster.ie. So what’s new here? Nothing much really in relation to the Google Penguin 2 update. Long term there isn’t much that has changed in here in the last 10 years really. What has changed is that Loadza has changed its domain name several times. They cannot seem to get it right really. EmployIreland.com that was 4th there is replaced by Indeed.ie about a year or more ago when they came to our market. Monster is the 5th recruitment web site there for the last 10 years.
So in essence the top 5 results for the word “jobs” haven’t changed at all in the last Google Penguin 2 update.

Where the changes that did occur are on the bottom part of the search page. That is the space that in the last 10 years have been occupied mostly by the Irish start-up job boards or similar sites. FAS was always there somewhere. They did rebrand to SOLAS, but forgot to do it online. Hence FAS.ie is still there. Good old civil servants…

So what the Google Penguin 2 update did affect is the last 4 remaining slots the search results page fro the word “jobs”. You can say Google hasn’t changed much really. What we are going to look at is if the Google Penguin 2 update was good actually. Or is it a step back in the quality of the search results?

The bottom of the page of the search results for jobs has been occupied by start-up job boards. It always was a dynamic space. In the last 10 year, about 100 web sites appeared and disappeared from there. I can remember the first Irish Jobs Aggregator IrishJobs.ie featuring there, and a long list of the site showing Irish jobs listings. There was one recruitment agency that made up there – in 2010 when the CPL.ie new web site was released. In this new update, CPL.ie dropped to 128 places, while their other site CPLJobs.com landed on a much better 53rd slot. Is there a hint that CPL.ie got hit by the Google Penguin 2 update? Most likely from the way it is ranking now.

It is still quite strange that no other recruitment agency got listed on the first page for the word “jobs” there ever, isn’t it?

So what did Google Penguin 2 update replaced the Irish start-ups with?

Ie.Jobrapido.com – one job aggregator. Well, it is the only .com web site here. It actually does have jobs aggregated from sites like freelancer.com and similar. Some Irish recruitment agencies as well. The overall quality of the jobs advertised (content) if poor. A large number of jobs are taken down from the sites they are originally published on anyway, and the whole set of jobs is a really poor representation of the list of active jobs in Ireland. In essence a really poor experience for a job seeker.

JobsToday.ie – a UK newspaper publisher. Note that any link you click on that site it brings you to their UK web site (.co.uk). This results-driven by the backlinks from their newspaper releases is so wrong that it actually reminds of the Yahoo style paid search result placements from the end of the last century. It is pointless and out of place. It is no good to a Google visitor. There are simply a handful of jobs listed there on some UK newspaper web site.

Twitter.com/jobs – The page with the HTML Title: Jobs at “Twitter –San Francisco”. San Francisco??? A search result to someone looking for a job in Ireland in Google.ie? Google? Don’t you have a Google Maps division? Or do you want us all to emigrate? What’s the story there? What kind of a (crap) search result is that? Or did the Google Penguin 2 algorithm value a social media sites results “a bit” too much so the results from the social media are going to creep into any search we make?

So to conclude what have the Google Penguin 2 update brought us? It removed Irish start-ups and replaced them with what can be the best described irrelevant search results. In their own vocabulary, they call it SPAM. Luckily for us, this only affects the bottom part of the page. The “under the fold” stuff. The top part of the page wasn’t affected by the latest update.

How did your site ranking feature in the Google Penguin 2 update last week? If you are stuck give the SEO Consultant a shout!

Categories
Internet

IBEC Video: Ireland By Numbers

A picture says thousand words. The video on the other hand… Well you me the judge yourself. Here is how IBEC is seeing and promoting our coutrny:

  • There are 960 Foreign Companies based here Including
  • 8 of the Top 10 Pharmaceutical Companies
  • 15 of the Top 25 Medical Devices Companies
  • 8 of the Top 10 Technology Companies
  • Total US Investment in Ireland is greater than Brazil, Russia India & China Combined
  • We are the 4th Largest Exporter of Beef in the World
  • We make 15% of the World’s Infant Formula
  • 10 of the World’s Top Selling Drugs are made here
  • We are 2nd Largest Exporter of Medical Devices in Europe
  • Half of the World’s Fleet Aircraft are Managed from Ireland
  • And we’re 1st for the Availability of Skilled Labour

Categories
Career Recruitment Recruitment Agency

PMO Open Day

Cpl PMO Solutions are pleased to announce a Recruitment Open Day for IT Business Analyst’s. Cpl as largest IT Recruiter have unrivalled access to Ireland’s top companies in the Multinational, IT, Finance, Telcomms sectors and across the economy as a whole. With this coverage our specialist recruiters deal with the hiring managers for IT Business Analysts in every sector and are interested in meeting Business Analyst’s coming from a functional or technical background at all levels for current and upcoming opportunities (contract and permanent) with our clients.

If interested in attending please call in to Cpl’s offices in 83 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 between 12noon and 7pm on Thursday Feb 11th or contact liam.walsh@cpl.ie or Ph: 01 6146135 / roisin.kenny@cpl.ie or Ph: 01 6146073 for more info.

Categories
Career CV Database Internet Job Site Jobs Recruitment

Monster rethinking service offering

Monster is interested in what job seekers think of their jobs web site. Here is the mail sent to job hunters today:

SATISFIED?
LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK

Dear Job Seeker,

At Monster, we are committed to creating an online experience that advances your life and your career. To help us achieve this, we would like to invite you to provide some feedback on your experience using Monster.

Our Satisfaction Survey should only take around 12 -18 minutes to complete and all responses are confidential. Start the survey by clicking the link below. Your honest thoughts and opinions are greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your participation.

Click here for the satisfaction survey »

Best wishes,

Jesse Harriot
Vice President of Research

2009 Monster – All Rights Reserved
Hillview House, 15D Gilford Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4, Ireland

How about a iPhone raffle or something similar to get people to participate? Or is Monster not really interested in what people really think. Or not that much to give them the incentive to fill up the questionnaire?

Or Monster Marketing just didn’t think of it at all? :)

Categories
Blogs Internet Jobs LinkedIN Microsoft Recruitment

Tuesday Club – Irish Recruiters on LinkedIN

Social Networking finally started happening on a proper scale in the recruitment industry in Ireland! What accelerated is that one of the largest US multinationals present here in Ireland made the best person to stimulate the social networking available. Declan Fitzgerald is today the best known blogger on the recruitment topics among Irish employers. Declan did not stop there, but organised the social networking via the LinkedIN Group – Irish Recruiters. The group today has 840 members, and is still growing quickly. The next step Declan decided is to bring the social networking from the web to the real life, so we got:

irish-recruiters-logo Tuesday Club – Irish Recruiters on LinkedIN

How to sign up? Join the Irish Recruiters group in LinkedIN first, and see the Group info for more!

Categories
Blogs Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency Search Engine

Get Your Jobs Indexed by TwitterJobSearch

If you are a recruiter in Ireland I am guessing you would like your jobs to be advertised in real time in as many publications as you can afford. Any Irish Jobs boards are the obvious choice, and then the FREE Jobs sites that accept job advertisements. In Ireland there aren’t that many free jobs sites, but here is a free one, trying to be a jobs site – Twitter!

How to get your jobs in Twitter Job Search?

You will need to get your jobs in the format below and submit them to the Twitter Jobs Search.

<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<jobs>
<publisher-name>Your Job Site</publisher-name>
<publisher-url>http://www.yourjobsite.com</publisher-url>
<job>
<id>unique12345</id>
<date>2004-06-22 10:33:11</date>
<title>Customer Service Representative</title>
<company>Big ABC Corporation</company>
<url>http://www.yourjobsite.com/viewjob.php?jobid=unique12345</url>
<salary>50K per year</salary>
<jobtype>full-time, part-time, permanent</jobtype>
<education>Degree</education>
<experience>2+ years</experience>
<location>London</location>
<postcode>W1 3GR</postcode>
<description>Strong Applicant. Communication skills. </description>
<category>IT, Internet</category>
</job>
<job>
<id>unique12346</id>
<date>2004-06-22 10:33:11</date>
<title>Customer Service Representative</title>
<company>Big ABC Corporation</company>
<url>http://www.yourjobsite.com/viewjob.php?jobid=unique12345</url>
<salary>50K per year</salary>
<jobtype>full-time, part-time, permanent</jobtype>
<education>Degree</education>
<experience>2+ years</experience>
<location>London</location>
<postcode>W1 3GR</postcode>
<description>Strong Applicant. Communication skills. </description>
<category>IT, Internet</category>
</job>
</jobs>

Categories
Blogs

Career Builder is comming to Ireland!

Something strange happened today. First a well known Irish Recruitment agency called on the phone this morning and asks if we can post their jobs via our Multiple Jobs Posting service to the CareerBuilder job site. I found it strange because CareerBuilder is an old site and it used to be US oriented so far. So I checked and guess what? There is a CareerBuilder.ie Irish site.

cpl-jobs-web-site

I looked around and it has about 15 clients advertising jobs. Not overtly impressive, but hey!? It’s a start. CareerBuilder is in Ireland!

As the day goes by, I was checking some recruitment sites of the Irish recruitment agencies to get some inspiration, and guess what? Cpl has a new web site. I actually liked the old one better. But this one has all the right things that a recruitment site should have today: Video, blogs, and this giant footer made of gazillion links. I watched the video. And noticed that the vide on the CPL web site is an advertisement for the CareerBuilder! I still do not get what is he jobs site advertisement actually doing on a recruitment agency web site. Beats me!


Categories
Blogs

Anne Heraty (CPL) resigns from the Anglo Irish Bank Board of Directors

A great loss for the financial sector happened today with the partial takeover of the Anglo Irish Bank by the government the existing Board of Directors have all resigned. Anne Heraty who is running the largest Irish recruitment agency CPL also resigned today from her Directors role in the Anglo Irish Bank.

I see it as a loss for the whole financial industry, to lose people like Anne Heraty. She is a clear leader of the whole recruitment industry in Ireland, and actually quite unique in her capacity and the leading role in the industry in general.

Categories
Blogs

Matt’s Blog Post on ‘Recruitment in Ireland, Competition vs. Cooperation, and Facebook‘

I do not know Matt (the author), but an interesting read under the title:

Recruitment in Ireland, Competition vs. Cooperation, and Facebook

From Matt who describes him selves as:

I’m working as a consultant, creating new marketing and digital strategy solutions for the company…

Categories
Blogs

Wikipedia: Recruitment in the Republic of Ireland

The ‘Official’ definition of Recruitment in Ireland on Wikipedia.