How to make a job search engine

As I said in my previous post (job search site), I was working on launching a job search site. Nothing fancy. Just a simple search engine that uses Indeed.com’s API.

Since I’ve done it already, I’m going to share with you some of the stuff I learned while building my own job search site.

How to Make Your Own Job Search Site

Basically, there are three ways to do it: Go free, spend $$, spend $$ or nothing. Well, you will see what I mean after reading my post.

1) $0 Method

If you go to Indeed.com, you will see a link to the publisher program page. Click on it and go ahead and register for a publisher account. Once your account gets approved, login to the publisher control panel.

As default, you will see only 3 buttons: Create jobroll, Reports, My Account

Click on “Create Jobroll” and then click on “Create Job Search Box”

Follow the instructions there and you will have your own job search box ready within a few minutes. Here is an example of a job site created using this method.

Job Search Pal Built with $0 Method

As you can see there, once a visitor clicks on “Search”, it redirects to Indeed.com. I can earn money from Indeed’s publisher program this way. (it is similar to Adsense). eCPM is pretty nice too as you can see in the following stats.

This stat came from a small ad I ran for testing and got 19 clicks from it. That lasted for about 2 days because I took the site down. The reason for this is that I didn’t want to send my visitors to Indeed.com. My ultimate goal was to brand my job search engine as its own.

So if you use $0 method, that’s the main drawback. You can’t really brand your site because all the traffic will be redirected to Indeed.com.

2) $$ Method

There is a script that uses Indeed.com’s API to display search results on your OWN website. It’s called Mega Job Search

MegaJob Search enables you to display the job search results as if they are your own listings. It doesn’t say anything about Indeed.com. This way, you can brand your job search site pretty well.

Here is an example of what I did with this script.

Job Search Pal - Search over 1.3 million jobs

One drawback with the script is that the core part of the script is encrypted. You can’t customize the site too much.

3) $$$ or Nothing Method

I think I will eventually use this method, but not at the moment. What I mean by $$$ is that if you can hire someone to code the search script of your own. Or if you know how to program, you can probably do it yourself. I do have access to the API and I think I can program myself. It doesn’t look too difficult. To get the access to Indeed.com’s API, you will have to contact their support and ask them to enable the tab.

If you can come up with your own script, you will be able to customize your job search results the way you want them to be.

Final Thoughts

Here are some of things you might want to consider adding to your site once the site is ready.

1) Create subdomains and redirect them to predefined search results. For example, LoanOfficerJobs.JobSearchPal.com for loan officer jobs.

2) Create subdomains and display location specific jobs. For example, MarylandJobs.JobSearchPal.com for jobs in Maryland

3) Add newsletter to capture the audience. Offer something like “how to write a killer resume” as your free report. This way, you will probably get the most back out of your advertising investment.

4) I used only Adsense on the listings page, but you can add other offers from CPA networks for higher commissions.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this post.