How the latest Google update will affect recruitment agencies

This handy little article has been written for us by Michelle Hill of Red Rocket Media.

Over the last 18 months, Google has introduced three major updates to the way it returns search results, known as Caffeine, Panda and, just last week, Search, Plus Your World. Each one has thrown the importance of content into the limelight.

*Caffeine*
Launched in summer 2010, this enabled Google to display results more quickly after they were published. Prior to the update, the main content layer was updated every couple of weeks which meant there was a delay between Google indexing your content and when they actually made it available to searchers. Towards the end of 2011, they launched a further update which enabled them to determine when to give you more up to date results eg. for events  or hot topics. It was now able to identify the different types of searches and the level of freshness each one required. This affected 1 billion searches!
Results: recruitment agencies that publish fresh content win.

*Panda*
In Autumn 2011, the Panda update was introduced to penalise websites with low quality/thin or duplicated content. Websites known as ‘content scrapers’ which scour the internet for vacancies and post them on their own site, were consequently demoted in the search results. It also used artificial intelligence to identify the quality of a website by analysing how long visitors spend on your site, which pages they visit, how many adverts there are etc. Any deemed to be low quality were likewise given less priority in the search results.
Result: recruitment agencies that publish high quality, original content win.

*Search, Plus Your World*
This latest update took place last week and introduced a social element to search results. Now, when you search, Google will take your social-sphere (the main source being Google+) into consideration so say you search for a hotel in Manchester, if any of your social connections have written a review about it, they would be given priority in your search results. The thinking behind this, according to Nielson, is that whilst 42% of people trust search results, 90% trust recommendations from friends.
So how can recruitment agencies benefit from this?
Let’s say you publish an article called “5 Killer Interview Tips”. You share it with your ‘candidates’ circle on Google+. Sarah (one of the people in that circle) thinks it’s a great article and shares it with her ‘friends’ circle. Elizabeth (one of Sarah’s friends) sees it in her stream but doesn’t necessarily read it as she isn’t looking for a job at the moment.
A few months later, Elizabeth decides she is going to look for a new job and searches on Google for ‘interview tips’. Due to the previous social connection with Sarah, your article will be prioritised in her search results. Elizabeth clicks through to read the article and whilst she’s on your website, does a vacancy search. She finds one, submits her CV and voila you’ve connected with a candidate that previously may never have come across your website. Of course, the vital element here is that people want to share the content you produce. If it’s not shareable, it will fall on deaf ears at the first circle.
Result: recruitment agencies that publish highly shareable content win

Content wins every time
In every update, content has been the clear winner. Put simply, recruitment agencies that publish regular, high quality, original, shareable content are more likely to be returned in Google search results than those that don’t.

Comments

[Kurt Jarchow]

Do you have any good examples?

[Holly @ Carousel]

It's always been about content, hasn't it? Though people have always tried to find their way around that. The interesting thing is that Google is, little by little, making it increasingly important to provide *quality* content that people will want to share with others. The web is getting more and more social with each update.