Google isn’t a monopoly in search. It feels that way, maybe, but it’s not quite there. In the U.S. for the month of April, for instance, Statista says that Google owns 63.5 percent of search, with Microsoft properties, powered by Bing, own 24 percent and increasing.
Google is the 800-pound gorilla, for sure, so when it launched Google for Jobs last year, the hype around it was undoubtedly justified. However, if Microsoft made a similar play in its job search, then the hype should be at least one-fourth as buzzy, right?
Well, here we go. Head on over to Bing and do a job search and there’s a good chance you’ll get a Google for Jobs-like search result:
The look and feel is nearly identical to Google: Ad, ad, ad, the image you see above, then traditional search results. There is one huge difference, however. The highlighted job search results are only jobs posted on LinkedIn. That’s a stark contrast to Google, which lists a wide variety of sources, including the usual suspects, like ZipRecruiter and Monster.
Advantage: LinkedIn.
Fair? Don’t care. Microsoft paid $26.2 billion for LinkedIn. Think it’s not going to grow that property as much possible? Sorry <fill in any job site you want not named LinkedIn>, no Bing for you!
And if you’re keeping score at home, LinkedIn jobs still show up quite noticeably, so if you’re an employer looking to get the most out of your posting on Google and Bing, you’d better get those openings on LinkedIn, if they’re not already.
Slowly but surely, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are taking over the recruitment universe. This move by Microsoft isn’t as earth shaking as Google’s, but it’s significant and the forward motion continues.
