indeed-simplyhired-logos
Don’t call ’em SimplyIndeed.

When Recruit, Indeed‘s parent company acquired SimplyHired a few month’s ago, there was a lot of speculation around what would happen next. Would www.simplyhired.com just redirect to www.indeed.com? What would happen to SimplyHired’s customers and their promoted jobs? Would they maintain two separate entities?

Well, it looks like we now know what Indeed’s going to do, at least for now. A quick look at search results on SimplyHired reveals search results that are predominantly sponsored listings from Indeed.com. Additionally, inquiries about job postings drive traffic to Indeed.

SimplyHired Filled with Indeed.com Content

This move makes perfect sense, at least for now. Switching out SimplyHired’s search results with sponsored content from Indeed is a quick-and-dirty way to increase profits while not soiling your own brand. Imagine if tomorrow all of Google’s search results were predominantly sponsored links. People would freak and leave Google in droves.

Profits would spike initially, but brand would erode and traffic would die over time. But if Google bought a second-tier search engine, packed with with sponsored results and deleted the word “Google” anywhere on the site, Google wouldn’t suffer at all, but they’d continue printing money as usual.

According to Compete data, SimplyHired is still generating about 3 million visitors every month. If we guess one visitor equals an average of 5 jobs clicked per visit, at a minimum of 25 cents per click, then we can do some very rough math and conservatively estimate $3.75 million monthly being added to Indeed’s bottom line.

Indeed is in “the zone.” This move to eliminate a competitor for (what was likely) pennies-on-the-dollar, flip the switch on new revenue and further corner the pay-per-click market for job postings is so well played.

How long will this structure last? My guess is, as long as traffic keeps flowing and the search engine rankings remain strong, it’ll be status quo. However, if traffic deteriorates, then Simply Hired may just become a testing ground for new ideas and products, or just redirect back to the flagship.

Only time will tell.

 

About the Author

joel-cheesman-headshotJoel Cheesman has over 20 years experience in the online recruitment space. He worked for both international and local job boards in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. In 2005, Cheesman founded HRSEO, a search engine marketing company for HR, as well as launching an award-winning industry blog called Cheezhead.

He has been featured in Fast Company and US News and World Report. He sold his company in 2009 to Jobing.com. He was employed by EmployeeScreenIQ, a background check company. He currently runs Hire Daily, a site for recruiting news and is the founder of Ratedly, an iOS app that monitors anonymous employee reviews. He is the father of two children and lives in Indianapolis. Yes, he’s on Twitter and LinkedIn.