One of my connections asked a very good question on LinkedIn the other day.
Mark Parent, Founder & CEO of Ment Digital, posed the following;
Is Indeed cannibalizing Glassdoor?
User searches for Glassdoor steadily increased until mid-2018, when Recruit, Indeed's parent company, purchased Glassdoor for $1.2B. Since that time, fewer and fewer users have been searching for Glassdoor.
Over the last several years, Indeed has enhanced its offering, mirroring many of the features that allowed Glassdoor to grow: reviews, salary data, and company pages. This has permitted Indeed to remain the 800lb gorilla in recruitment marketing.
When trying to post a job on Glassdoor, users are directed to post to Indeed, as Indeed postings now power Glassdoor. Recruit is working to position Glassdoor as an employer branding arm, with Indeed being the job posting marketplace.
What remains to be seen is if Glassdoor can stay relevant as a player in the employment branding space without original job content or if Indeed will eventually swallow it whole. Given the changes Indeed has already made, I suspect that Glassdoor will be a shell of its former self in another few years.
It’s a fair question from my perspective. All the marketing dollars I’ve seen (TV etc.) lately primarily go to Indeed. The trend is most noticeable when you look at the trends on Google.
People searching for the site ‘Glassdoor’ has slowly been shrinking since the takeover in 2018. The pandemic caused a bump again but I wonder if that’s temporary.
Glassdoor searches since inception. The 1st downward trend happens after the sale to Indeed.
All of the commenters on Mark’s post were in agreement. The Glassdoor brand is being slowly diminished. We’ve probably seen ‘peak Glassdoor’.
Indeed’s acquisition playbook has always been to take out competition while acquiring traffic. They hollowed out SimplyHired by inserting its own jobs and SH is still alive today for the simple fact it still had SEO traffic. Clever move.
I asked some HR pals what they thought of Glassdoor and whether or not it was still relevant to them. Their responses were mixed.
“When we look at our Glassdoor metrics, jobs & company page outpace reviews by a lot. Don’t know if Indeed is edging it out…would be good to know.”
“I wouldnt say it’s a top source for “job hunting” however I do think it’s an important research tool for candidates once they have identified a potential employer or are interviewing/considering an offer. Indeed and Glassdoor are 2 different products in my opinion, Indeed - job postings /Glassdoor - brand and employer research tool.”
“Personally I don't use it. There's no way to separate field vs professional roles, so for a lot of companies the vast info available doesn't help me anyway.”
“In the hundreds of job seeker interviews I've done, Glassdoor and Indeed reviews play a small role in the evaluation of the org. The job seekers I've interviewed either don't use these tools, and the ones who do said they only read the 3s because the 1s are just mad former employees with an axe to grind and the 5s are paid for or from marketing.”
For the time being, both sites will live on. Glassdoor still has a huge amount of traffic but with the duplicate job content I don’t see a strong reason for job seekers to keep using it. Especially since Indeed has plenty of reviews too.
Or will it reinvent itself?
I took a quick look at their LinkedIn page, and came across the profile of Taylor Meadows who joined Glassdoor in 2022 as their Head Strategist. His LinkedIn headline reads;
“A reimagined Glassdoor is coming.”
If they think it needs ‘reimagining’ they seem to admit the fact that the brand needs some help. A lot of people are saying social media has become the new complaint department but we shall see Taylor, we shall see.
Indeed is still the king and has plenty of sway in the industry but with sponsored Google Job ads coming they may have peaked too. I’ve also heard they have cut back on a lot of their affiliate partnerships apparently to save dollars.
Cost saving also likely led them to add their listings to the Google for Jobs index. They also just announced 2,200 layoffs representing 15% of its workforce.
All I can say at this point is that the world of jobs is ever evolving. I think this could be an inflection point for the world’s #1 job site.
Nothing stays the same forever.
