Indeed Tests Job Listing Search Engine

Indeed.com is beta testing what could be the world's first comprehensive job search engine. Indeed is a vertical search engine that indexes results across hundreds of disparate sources of job listings such as job boards, newspaper sites, as well as professional association and niche databases.

Searches are performed as they would be with a classic search engine such as Google, and specific queries can be saved into RSS feeds.

The site has accumulated over 1.5 million jobs into its index since its launch in November, and results are kept relevant by purging listings that are over 30 days old. Its core engine was built with the Lucene Open Source project as its foundation, but much of the work to customize the system has taken place in house.

Job listings originate from over 200 newspapers and hundreds of niche sites ranging from scientific organizations to publications like Editor and Publisher. Sources are strictly third party and do not include corporate career pages. Indeed has also partnered with job sites and receives listings in file format to reduce the risk of data abnormalities.

One abnormality uncovered by BetaNews was a listing where a job opening was no longer available. BetaNews also found another employment specific search engine, Job-Search-Engine.com, but that site is limited to sourcing job boards.

At the present time, listings are bound by geography; only jobs that are located in the United States are included. However, Indeed intends to upgrade the engine so that it includes international jobs as well. Despite it raw form as a beta, the company insists that the technology is production quality and ready for mainstream use.

In a conversation with BetaNews, Indeed.com co-founder Paul Forster was confident about the engine's functionality, stating, "We will do for jobs what Google did for Web searches." Like Google, Indeed will license its technology to others sites.

Indeed is a new addition to the upsurge of vertical search engines that specialize in fulfilling specific needs. Other recent examples of this type of search engine are AOL's premium Kayak travel site and the SingingFish media search engine.