Should you post jobs to Google Base?


Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 11:00am Monday 07 September 2009

Last week, I was drawn into an discussion regarding Google Base. It was a simple question... Should you post jobs to Google Base?

Google Base was launched in 2005 covering a variety of items including – housing (real estate), jobs, events, vehicles, products etc. In Australia, housing (aka real estate) is the only Google Base item being promoted. To search for jobs in Australia, you need to use the international search form.

The site is free to advertise, but you need to post the items via the Data Feed or API. Google Base may not have any direct impact on your web traffic but it may help with your off-site SEO. Although Google Base is similar to the search function, it is not the same thing. It's actually harder to use as it contains more search options.



Google Base is a way for you to submit specific types of content to Google. The items you submit will be included in Google Base, Google Products, Google Maps and depending on the items relevance; they can automatically be posted in the main search engine.

This is an important thing to understand because the quality of the data you submit will not only affect your results in Google Base, but in these other areas of Google as well.

Eg. If you submit a job listing to Google Base with specific location details - the job can be mapped and found on Google Maps. See previous article titled Use of Google Maps in a Job Search.

Many people have predicated the closure of Google Base. But I doubt Google will close the project as it provides vital data feeds which help identify, rank and further explain complex content. Did you know that Yahoo! now accepts Google Base data feeds to their search engine? Odd, but now you can share and use your Google Base data within Yahoo! Search.

If you think about how people search for jobs on search engines, ie by typing in keywords into the search field; Google could have been a major player in our local market, or will it become a player? There are many people who have suggested that Google could shake up SEEK’s dominance of the online recruitment industry. I doubt it; have a look at the performance details below.

Over the years, I have integrated various clients with Google Base. In all honesty, the site may not return any investments spent on integration. A free job board does not always equal quality. Let’s have a look at the performance statistics of one of these clients over the past week. You can make up your own mind.