First, a quick definition - in 2017, Google launched Google for Jobs, a service dedicated to making Google a primary job search source for all. It works like this - Google scrapes all the jobs from career sites across the world, and by coding your jobs/career sites in a certain way, you can do your best to ensure the jobs at your company perform well when candidates search for jobs (think, "Financial Analyst") in the geographical area they are interested in.
The big news in 2017 and beyond that Google was getting into job search/job postings. Since so many candidates start searching for jobs with search engine query, the reality of what Google was doing - putting a big listing of jobs from G4J at the top of search results on anything resembling job search - was thought to be a threat to all who market and sell job postings. This obviously impacts the future business results of Indeed, LinkedIn and the traditional job boards.
Early results show that the change, i.e. the potential to put other companies out of the job posting business (or hurt their financial results), has been slower than expected to materialize.
But to really understand the potential impact, you simply need to look at other industries. Here's a stat that should make us think it's only a matter of time before Google for Jobs is completely dominant:
On mobile devices, 62% of searches never leave Google. Google’s desktop dominance is also growing: Between 2016 and today, desktop searches that never leave Google have risen from 9% to 35%.
You may have noticed that in a lot of Google searches you do, Google provides enough information in a dialog box, and you don't have to leave Google to get to another site. That's by design - Google’s goal is to provide info directly, without having to refer users to other websites. The stat above tells you how good they are getting at providing enough info/value so you don't have to click and go somewhere else.
The latest news covering this trend - song lyric site Genius.com has accused Google of scraping its site. More from Mashable:
"Lyrics annotation service Genius.com has accused Google of scraping its site and stealing its content, the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend. However, a lyrics data provider at the center of the controversy claimed on Monday that those allegations were without merit.
The Journal reported that Genius had been complaining to Google about the alleged theft for some time, with Google consistently denying the allegations. To prove its point, Genius proceeded to alter lyrics hosted on its site with a variety of different apostrophes.
The company alternated between apostrophe styles in a frequency that allowed it to embed a secret morse code message into the text. The message in question: “Red handed.” Soon after, the modified lyrics, complete with the hidden message, showed up on Google.com, according to Genius."
Why the drama about song lyrics? Genius.com says its traffic is dropping because, for the past several years, Google has been publishing lyrics on its own platform, with some of them lifted directly from the music site.
In other words, when Google provides its own data rather than referring web searches to other sites, life gets hard.
The fact that Google does that in 35% of all web searches today - with an eye to take a lot more market share - should make everyone who relies on referral traffic really nervous.
Google for Jobs hasn't put anyone out of business in the job posting industry - yet. But, it feels like we're in the first quarter of this game.
Diversification of business model seems like a smart play for those in the crosshairs.