The impact of the August 2024 Google Core Update on Online Recruiting Part 2: - Deep Dive

This is part 2 of a three-part blog post about the latest Google Core August 2024 update and its impact on Online Recruiting.

In the first part, I covered how job boards today get traffic, how job seekers search for jobs, and what they receive on the SERP page.

In this post, I will explore how the user experience for job seekers has changed after this update.

In the third part, I review the impact of the changes and discuss the strategic meaning.

This blew my mind when I saw the results for the first time. Notice that you have to use a VPN in the US to trigger these. 

Example 1: Precise branded search

So, for the following example, I am going to do the following search:

• Job title: product manager
• Company: Openai 

Let’s look at the results:

1. The first three organic results are actual job matches from the OpenAI ATS platform—the links lead directly to OpenAI’s ATS! 
2. The result in position four is the actual career page
3. The fifth result is a job ad page from a niche job board that leads directly to a job ad
4. Then we have some more job results from the ATS of OpenAI
5. Then we have Reddit (of course, what is a Google search today without Reddit)
6. On positions 8 and 9, we finally have Indeed with links to their search result landing pages for “product manager open” and “open jobs.
7. The Google Jobs UX is not triggered at all. 

WOW! Just WOW!  

Let’s look at another example to cement what we have learned:

Example 2: Precise branded search

This time, I am searching the following terms:

• title: senior product designer
• company: grow therapy

Again, my first two organic results are actual job links: the first to a niche job board, the second one to the ATS (Greenhouse). 

This time, however, the Google Jobs UX is also shown.  

Let’s scroll down, shall we?

The first page's results include links to other job boards serving the same job and a link to the career page. 

Notice something? There is no Indeed link for “grow therapy jobs” or “senior product designer jobs,” although Indeed serves these pages: 

Let’s search for a well-known company name + jobs and see what happens. In this case, "target jobs":

We see the link to the career page first, then the Google Jobs UX and after that the link to the ATS page that is correct for my location. Indeed is shown afterwards, on position 5. Again, all links on Google Jobs are from the ATS.

The same result can be triggered for Wallmart:

Here I have a link to the job on the Wallmart homepage above the usual Google Jobs and Indeed results.

Notice also that all Google Jobs links point directly to the Wallmart ATS and not to Indeed, Linkedin or any of the other major job boards.

Example 3: Generic search for a company name

This is where things get very interesting:

The first organic result is the company's career page. The career page is shown above Google Jobs.

The second one is the actual ATS page with the job listings.

Only after that do we see the search result landing page from Indeed.  

Mind blow. 

Let’s look at some other examples and try to make a summary: 

Query: registered nurse job Sutter health

These results are exciting because we see three organic results from the company's career page above the Google Jobs feature. Not only that, but these are actual search result landing pages for nurse category jobs! This is the first time I have seen this.

Also, the Google Jobs results are from the company's ATS page, not job boards or aggregators. 

Example 4: Sitelinks from ATS pages

This is a fantastic example. Here, we see the results for a generic brand search called “open marketing jobs” and the impact on Sitelinks.

Sitelinks are extra links that appear below a website's main search result on Google, helping users quickly find essential pages like "Contact" or "About Us." Google chooses these links automatically based on how well-organized the website is. 

Google only displays site links when it believes they will be helpful to the user. If your site's structure doesn't enable Google's algorithms to identify appropriate site links, or if the site links are deemed irrelevant to the user's query, they will not appear.

The site links contain the following links:

• Three direct links to jobs, two of them relevant to the search
• Link to all open jobs
• Link to all marketing open jobs  

This is a huge opportunity for ATS platforms. Historically, they have been very bad at creating properly structured career sites with well-defined category pages.

They had no reasons to do that – Indeed would generally always win in branded searches. 

Well, this can be a huge traffic driver for ATS platforms. I am willing to bet that this traffic will be highly relevant applicants. 

Read the next part: The Impact of the August 2024 Google Core Update on Online Recruiting Part 3: - Impact and Strategic Meaning.

Read the first part: The impact of the August 2024 Google Core Update on Online Recruiting - Part 1