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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!

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Career Internet Job Site Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Advertised jobs numbers comparison

Here is a list of jobs advertised on the leading Irish job sites and the recruitment agency web sites.

Job Boards
Irish Jobs 12253
Recruit Ireland 3350
Monster 2969
Jobs 2800
Irish Times 1883
Employ Ireland 1339

Recruitment Agencies
CPL 1340
Brightwater 1291
Morgan McKinley 1178
Sigmar 671
Stelfox 627
Grafton 228
Manpower 183

Irish Jobs has by far the largest number of jobs. Actually they have about 10 times more jobs than the average competing Irish job site. Is there really that much jobs? Is that a real success story? When the numbers are so much off the scale, it always stinks a bit. Especially knowing that they own the Jobs.ie site that does so badly on the jobs numbers compared to the main site.

On the recruitment agency side there is a tight race at the top. CPL still has it top spot, while surprisingly a small company Brightwater is in second. They show more jobs on their site than a much larger company Morgan McKinley that is on the third spot. Are Brightwater really working as Busy Bees? Are they really filling 5 times more roles than companies like Grafton or Manpower? Again quite unlikely. Same as Irish Jobs web site above, the number are again just very off the chart.

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Blogs

Jobs Market works for you!

JobsMarket.ie is a Social Network for recruitment. Here is a how Jobs Market front page describes the jobs sites:

Jobs Market works for you!
There are three fundamentally bad aspects of the jobs boards:
1. The job boards are selling YOUR data and you gave them it for free.
2. The job board has effectively restricted access to companies who can afford to pay for the service.
3. Your data is only visible for those periods of time when companies pay for it and actively search for some skills.

Jobs Market is the reverse of this and bring benefits for those actively looking for work, those not actively looking for work, employers and even recruitment agencies.

So what is Jobs Market?

Here’s what Jobs Market does:
1. Enables people to promote their skills
2. Enables people to publish their availability and references
3. Enables people to control how their data is presented and how they can be contacted
4. Allows ALL employers to search for people

Best of all? It’s simply free to everyone.

Jobs Market recruitment Social Network is in BETA stage. With the interesting usage of LinkedIN hResume. :)

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Blogs

LoadzaJobs

It is funny how an economic climate change can make your company name sound funny: Loadzajobs!

In the Celtic Tiger era the name Loadzajobs meant something. Loadzajobs meant something good. It sounded somehow relaxing, in a sense, telling you not to worry about anything since there are Loads of jobs in Iceland available at anytime. Well those times are gone! The more appropriate description of the state of the Irish Economy today would be Lodzaredundancies!

Loadzajobs is still displaying some jobs there on the web site. Somehow it doesn’t sound so convincing any more. Loadzajobs sounded much beter a year ago. Today it would sound funny if it would not be happening to us!

Categories
Blogs Career Jobs Recruitment Recruitment Agency

Any Jobs in Ireland?

Today’s announcement from one of the leading jobs sites in Ireland nicely describes what does a jobs scene look in Ireland today:

Hi All

Just a quick note to let you know we have now added some new locations;

Europe
Australia
United Arab Emirates
New Zealand
Canada
USA
South Africa
North Africa
Middle East

If you have any queries please let me know.

The jobs sites cannot really survive advertising the jobs in Ireland only. Simply there is not enough jobs in Ireland to sustain the business model of advertising jobs in Ireland only. There simply isn’t enough jobs here anymore. Irish Jobs are gone. Jobs are elsewhere today.

Welcome to the emigration wave…

Categories
Blogs Jobs Recruitment

Irish Jobs sites prices falling

It is interesting to see how the overpriced Irish jobs sites started reducing their prices drastically. I just saw this ad this morning, and I still think they should reduce it much, much more, but at least it is a step in the right direction… Perhaps a too small step and too late?

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Blogs

Jobs Fair

An Online Recruitment Jobs Fair has several advantages over a Traditional Recruitment Fair.

Jobs Fair for Recruiters

More convenient: No staffing required.
More effective: Lasts for two weeks instead of a few hours.
More cost-effective: Cheaper than holding an actual job fair. No material, travel, food and accommodation costs.
More targeted: Targeted at specific industries/audiences.
Global scope: Available to anyone with an internet connection.

Jobs Fair for Candidates

More convenient: Can visit several companies from the comfort of their own home, and can be accessed from anywhere in the country 24/7.
More cost-effective: Can attend without the expense of time or travel.
More interactive: Host of user-friendly and state-of-the-art features including Podcasts, Employer Videos and Webinars.

Do you think Irish Recruiters are ready? For Employer Videos? Podcasts? Webinars?

What about Job Hunters? Aren’t they just interested in a better salary?

Categories
Jobs Recruitment

LoadzaJobs.ie Down Today

LoadzaJobs.ie

LoadzaJobs.ie is down (offline) the whole day today. Since the downtime came completely unannounced to the clients, it makes you wonder how ‘planned’ the Loadzajobs.ie downtime was. Especially in the light of the Jobs.ie being hacked last week, let’s just hope Loadzajobs.ie is done for some other reason than a security breach….