ZipRecruiter grew conversion rate 4.5x with the new job search experience on Google

Published on May 8, 2018

Challenge

ZipRecruiter began in 2010 as a tool to help businesses of all sizes distribute online job postings affordably across multiple platforms. Wanting to widely distribute millions of jobs, which are posted directly to the site, ZipRecruiter partnered with Google Search to add structured data, a standardized format for providing information to search engines.

The company began adding structured data to their website as a best practice in 2012. They continually monitor and add new fields. "Structured data for job postings makes a lot of sense for us, as it's helped us more easily surface what we know job seekers are immediately looking for," says Misha Silin, ZipRecruiter senior product manager. "We actively keep up with the latest micro-formatting standards, refreshing our structured data content as often as new data elements are released. Our goal is to reduce friction for job seekers on search engines and make it easier for them to find jobs posted on ZipRecruiter."

Solution

With job postings scattered across the web, newspapers and networks of friends and colleagues, job seekers can have a hard time finding listings that are a good match for their unique needs and skills. Google launched a search experience for jobs, leveraging job posting structured data in June 2017. This worked perfectly with ZipRecruiter's approach. "Google is a major partner in our online strategy of making it easy for candidates to apply for the perfect job," Silin says. "Google fit right into that collaboration. We were really excited about being able to expose this original content to search engines in a discoverable way."

Already experienced with the format, ZipRecruiter easily implemented structured data to meet Google guidelines. "There wasn't a need to do any sort of big overhaul—it was already part of our DNA," Silin says. "Still, the Google rollout was a good opportunity for our company to revisit how we handle data," he adds. "We were able to unlock even more value by exposing data that we've mined over the years via machine learning to search engines in a structured way." If Google recommends a new field that's useful for job seekers, ZipRecruiter tests and implements it for their job pages.

Result

The company uses conversion rate (the percentage of people who register for ZipRecruiter's service after landing on their site from Google Search) as a key measure of digital effectiveness. After the launch of JobPosting structured data, Google organic traffic to ZipRecruiter job pages converted at a rate three times higher than organic traffic from other search engines. The Google organic conversion rate on job pages was also more than 4.5 times higher than it had been previously, and the bounce rate for Google visitors to job pages dropped by over 10%.

Lastly, ZipRecruiter saw a 35% rise in monthly organic non-branded traffic. "We saw that increase in conversion rate when we were reviewing results the day after the launch of Google for Jobs," Silin says.

Online job seekers want to see new job listings as soon as they're posted, but don't want to waste time on ones that are outdated, but not yet removed. ZipRecruiter was pleased with the accuracy and freshness of their job postings in Google Search results. "We've been really impressed by how fresh the content is within Google's search experience," Silin notes. "They're basically updating job listings almost in real time."

The company is well situated for continued growth and effective service. "What's great about structured data is it quickly provides job seekers with a lot of key information about a job so that they can decide if it's right for them," Silin says. "The new Google Search experience with structured data is very valuable for us, especially as a tool to help job seekers find jobs on ZipRecruiter."