Google updated their Search Central Developers Job Posting page to remove South Korea as a region in which the Job Search Experience is available.
Google Search Experience
A Search Experience is a rich result, at least three of which are interactive rich results.
Rich results stand out from the regular search results, calling attention to the webpages that are listed within them.
According to Google’s search experiences gallery page, there are three interactive search experiences:
- Event
- Home Activities
- Job Posting
This is a screenshot of a search result with a Job Search Experience rich result:
Job Posting Search Experience
Google offers businesses the possibility of ranking their job postings in an interactive rich result called the Job Posting Search Experience.
Businesses can use JobPosting structured data in order to become eligible to appear in a Job Posting search experience.
There are actually two ways to qualify.
Google’s documentation advises:
“You can improve the job seeking experience by adding JobPosting structured data to your job posting web pages.
Adding structured data makes your job postings eligible to appear in a special user experience in Google Search results.
You can also integrate with Google by using a third party job site.”
Regional Availability of Job Search Experience
This rich result is available in regions around the world:
- Asia
- Europe
- Latin America
- Middle East & North America
- North America
- Sub-Saharan Africa
While the Job Experience is available worldwide, it’s not available in every country.
For example, the Job Search Experience is not available within the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania.
The Job Search rich result used to be available in South Korea but Google recently quietly removed it from the regional availability documentation on February 28, 2023..
An entry in the Search Central developers page changelog was added in March 2023 with the following statement:
“February 28: Removed South Korea from the available regions for the job search experience on Google.”
I spoke with International search marketer Christopher Shin of Digital Asset Directors (LinkedIn profile) to ask why Google would leave the Korean market for job search postings.
Christopher shared:
“People in Korea don’t use Google to search for jobs. They go directly to job posting websites when they’re looking for jobs.
None of my clients have ever, not even once, asked about optimizing for Google job postings.
It’s not how people search here.”
Christopher also explained that Google has about a 43% market penetration in Korea, up from a 5% share around eight years ago.
Google is growing in popularity in Korea. But Korean search patterns perhaps don’t justify keeping the job posting search experience there.
Featured image by Shutterstock/Mix and Match Studio