Googlers
Rebranding Froggle to Product Search is a bit like rebranding Google to Search, don’t you think?
MM, miss you and your cheese cracks at the old blog where you were you
Archive for the ‘Search’ Category
mis-branding alarm to marissa mayer and jeff bartelma
Thursday, April 19th, 2007Posting job ads for free on Google: no cost = no worth?
Monday, April 9th, 2007Most of the people I have talked with recently either haven’t heard or delved much into understanding the Google Base service. In a nutshell, Base is a free-of-charge classifieds-like space that enables advertisers load their ads in specific verticals: cars, houses, personals, jobs, etc. The idea as the google base blog explains it to posters is that
“based on your items’ relevance, users may find (your ads) in their results for searches on Froogle, Google Maps and even our main Google web search”
(further down in the same page, the Base Reach description actually does away with the “gogle web search” part so there’s a bit of a mixed message there)
This is not just catered for the one-ad pusher: the site has instructions for advertisers with serious volumes. And obviously, this is not part of a charity program; more content (from posters) produces more pages and pageviews (for/from the user) which produces more ad view opportunities (for Google’s paying advertisers) and more ad revenue (for Google).
Effectively, when you do a search on Google, it is not evident yet that Base results are coming up as natural or sponsored results. Yet. Instead, if you want to see Base listings you have to go to the Base search page (if you are in the know of something different, yell). This is understandable as it is expected that a service like this will create contention between Google and its advertisers as it effectively competes with them; the issue tails onto Google advertisers’ own clients, who in theory at least, could effectively load up classifieds directly to Google. So, this is clearly disruptive.
Somehow or other, I see the contention going away, whether it is through sheer muscle or via a compromise that assures advertisers that they are still getting their money’s worth. In this context, it will be interesting to see what is the service take up once Google goes all out on it and how it is featured to complement the current advertiser services.
At this stage of the game I would venture that free classifieds are not going away. The obvious fact is that advertisers do not pay to just blast data online, but to attract the right audience. You may say that this is the core reason why you still want to pay a job board for ad posting or (may be less so) for a print ad in the paper: because they get you the right individuals. If not, well they need to try harder for you.
Among early Base adopters in Australia, I was able to see today that sites like Careerone and Nowhiring, posting on behalf of their own clients with the aim of further reaching the available channels to look for talent on the web. Who will be the first agency to use Base locally?
sitewatch
Monday, March 12th, 2007spotted myspider today, though I am not sure how recent it is; it claims to have 300k plus jobs aggregated from the top job boards in Australia; jobsearch and and other corporates coming soon.
It called my attention that compared to other aggregators that take visitors to the original site if visitors want to see the job ad in full, myspider shows a flat text version of the ad scraped from the job board, on their own site. Only if job seekers click on the ‘apply online’ button, are they taken to the native (job board) online application screen.
The full ad display on the site is kinda ugly (e.g. no line breaks) but hey they info is there. I wonder is what this produces is more filtered traffic to the original site (she who clicks applies). If that’s the case, is it better or worse for the job seeker? and for the job site? and for the advertiser?
taking a page from real estate
Monday, March 5th, 2007PBL’s myhome launched over the last couple of weeks or so, amid hopes that the new entrant will increase competition and lower advertising costs. This according to Chris Larsen’s BRW piece. Meantime, realestate put its beta site out around the same time, possibly anticipating the dominant players might have to lift their game to fend off a price war, or a really cool site. So, it’d beta works then haaaaa.
Well you be the judge, check out the sites or have a quick squeeze at some of the screen shots below:
As you can imagine maps are pretty essential to real estate sites, but not of exclusive use to them. Check out how you can search for walmart jobs in toronto via the Jobloft site.
Other than understanding the job’s whereabouts and its immediate amenities (parkes, restaurants, schools) I think I would also like to know if:
- the area is well covered by public transport, or if i can pick up the bike for commuting,
- if there are houses for rent or purchase in case i love the job and i want to move/relocate,
- what’s the zone’s crime incidence ( I had a link of a mashup to show this but lost it, anyone still has it?)
Back to essentials, I wonder if we’ll ever see a site (whether it is a job board or real estate’s) that enables user recommendations - or otherwise - to specific agencies and / or consultants. The technology is there.
DIY
Sunday, February 25th, 2007I always wondered if hairdressers do their own hair, or if dentists sort themselves out using a mirror; I’ll ask next time I see one of either. What I am more certain of is that advertisers such as the job boards you may be using, need in turn additional advertising platforms to generate the traffic that hopefully is going to produce results to you.
Products like Adwords enable advertisers to market their wares on sites which are part of what is called their ad distribution network; the idea is to expand the reach within relevant sites or portions thereof (e.g. advertise on a social website when the users comes from an Australian IP address only)
The points of the rant were
- If you think that sites like myspace and youtube are too “exotic” to advertise your jobs ads because there’s only teens or freaks or geeks there, don’t. Job boards in Australia are getting you traffic from these sites day in and day out (via themselves of course). Wouldn’t it be great if you were able to work out what are the job board traffic sources that produce the largest amount of applications, or the highest quality to you?
- There is no restriction for you to advertise in the same platforms if you want to further customise/target your advertising, or take people straight to your site, etc. The exercise is operationally straight forward but not trivial: there is a science and art to showing the right keywords and managing to budgets, and obviously producing the desired results. Search consultants are making a life out of advising companies on how to do that. I think that is the case because it does pay off.
Have a great week