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Search SEEK straight from Google (gets a big thumbs down)

by Brett Iredale March 20, 2008

Google appears to have introduced some new embedded search functionality for certain web sites.

If you do a search for SEEK in Google you find this:



At first glance you would assume that this allows you to search for jobs on SEEK straight from Google.  Eg if I type in "IT Manager" I would assume it would go straight to IT Manager jobs on Seek.  Wrong.  All it does is return Google results that match - i.e. it does this "IT manager site:seek.com.au".

I wouldn't imagine that SEEK have paid or even requested this functionality because quite frankly it is rubbish.  Who on earth wants to do a nested Google search from within Google search results?  Show me what I intuitively expect to see or get rid of it.







Entry filed under: General, Industry News

4 CommentsAdd your own

1. Scott Savage March 20, 2008 at 9:30am

Google will fix this I am sure. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but I wonder how Microsoft's purchase of FAST this year will affect Seek? Will integration between Live search be better than Google search? Will Microsoft refocus FAST onto other areas of it's business? If Microsoft did end up buying Yahoo then it would re-unite FAST's technology, what effect would that have? Lots of variables.

2. Anonymous March 24, 2008 at 4:22pm

I think this is probably part of Google's "Universal Search" where the search engine "blend[s] listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages"[1]; of which the "SEEK" search result listing is an example of an integrated OneBox display.

[1] http://searchengineland.com/070516-143312.php

3. Scott Savage March 26, 2008 at 6:12am

Looks like some other people are not happy with the search generally, maybe Seek themselves will complain?
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11228

4. Carey Eaton March 26, 2008 at 9:59am

This will tell you what its all about:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/search-within-site-tale-of.html


I'd personally question whether a jobseeker would really use a generalist search site to search a site that is essentially a specialist search site itself.

Its a question of user experience, assuming of course that we can think of a good enough reason to simply hand over all our advertisers' job content to Google.

The first point is that jobseekers are going to get much more up to date jobs by coming to SEEK since Google is not going to be able to scrape our site anywhere near the frequency that it gets updated.

Since our own customised FAST search engine is much more highly tuned to Australian jobseekers' intentions than Google's, I think jobseekers are simply not going to get the results they want by searching SEEK from somewhere else.

The evidence shows for example that it is a very small minority of job searches that use a pure Google-style keyword-only search.

The tools and information around the jobs on SEEK make for a much richer and more meaningful job seeking user experience than simply re-searching Google over and over again, or clicking back and forth between Google search results list and individual jobs on SEEK.

Its highly debatable that there are Australian jobseekers around that simply stumble across SEEK on Google in this way and decide to stick with Google rather than take a deeper look at SEEK.

This functionality is also a fairly negative experience for all those advertisers that have purchased Premium Listings or StandOut ads, those who promote their logos in search results, or want their bullet points displayed properly, or have put a bunch of metadata around the job, or have provided 'hidden' salary or location data to influence the search results without it being displayed etc etc.

These opinions aside, its certainly an interesting development and if it drives a lot more traffic to the site we'll know about it.

On the subject of Microsoft and FAST, I can't speak for either of course but I think its more likely to be a very positive development for SEEK and our customers since we are good friends with both Microsoft and FAST.

That said, while we were not the only Australian job board represented at the FAST get together in Orlando in March, nor will we be the only company affected by either the rapid pace of developments in search technology or indeed the competition between Google and Microsoft, we will certainly be doing everything we can to maintain a firm position at the leading edge of job search.

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