PITTSBURGH, PA - This week I was contacted by a company with a .Jobs TLD. "TLD" stands for Top Level Domain, and you see them every day in the form of a .com, .net, .org, or dot-whatever.
Two years ago, the dot-jobs TLD was launched with great fanfare, partially as a way for corporate recruiting departments to maintain EZ-to-find career sites for their candidates -- but mostly as a way for these sites to jump to the front of the organic SERP's.
Sort of like a Special Access Pass at Disney World.
Essentially, dot-jobs was an SEO play marketed in the name of improving the jobseeker's search experience. The pitch was that jobseekers who Google for "Merck jobs" (for example) would prefer to see the positions offered by Merck first -- and then see the "less relevant" job board and recruiter listings farther down the search result. Dot-jobs conferred instant legitimacy.
For dot-jobs customers, the arduous SEO tasks of updating keyword rich content and back linking were, presumably, to be secondary concerns. A standalone career site hosted on a dot-jobs domain was a trump card: dot-jobs beats dot-com, beats dot-net, beats dot-biz, and so on. PPC costs would tumble, the argument went, as career sites floated to their "rightful place" at the top of the organic results. Sweet victory!
It was a good idea. But in practice, dot-jobs doesn't seem to be working out that way. Here is the career site of the company who contacted me. And here is the search I did for them on Google. Where's the dot-jobs result? M.I.A.
Now curious, I ran some other Google searches for dot-jobs career sites:
- Coca Cola Jobs - 97-122 CPD
- Merck Jobs - 4-6 CPD
- IKEA Jobs - 9-12 CPD
- Jim Beam Jobs - 0 CPD
- Remax Jobs - 0 CPD
- Estee Lauder Jobs - 6-8 CPD
Note: These aren't just random companies. They're companies being touted on the dot-jobs homepage as flagship customers. Only Publix enjoys a top ranking with its dot-jobs domain. Everybody else is trailing the job boards that dot-jobs was supposed to preempt. Merck even has a testimonial on the dot-jobs homepage, yet Merck's dot-jobs page is fifth in the organic rankings (at least for my Google datacenter). Ouch.
What gives? Is a dot-jobs domain worth the $120/year investment? That's more than twelve times what dot-com domains sell for. Somebody enlighten me.
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