What criteria is the comparison of job sites based on ?

But this is not usually mesearued in the same way by every job board. That is why Jobboard Finder analyzed certification methods from all over the world and chose SimilarWeb to provide objective and comparable figures. Jobboard Finder has also developed a powerful comparison tool enabling users to compare up to 4 job boards at once.

Traffic figures help compare job websites

Most e-recruitment media know the number of their unique users, total visits and page views. However some will only communicate figures that work to their benefit. They will also use the best ones from the past 24 months, especially if the traffic is going down or if they lead a big television campaign last year. This makes it difficult for the account manager to compare job sites.

Other job boards might provide such a large number of figures that they inundate the user. Some calculate the average number of applications received for a job advertisement in a specific field. But what if your company is not as popular as Coca-Cola©, would you reach the same amount of applications?

Marketing managers use different web analytics tools from one company to another which is why traffic figures cannot always be compared on an equal basis. We have listed more than 25 web analytic tools worldwide and that is besides internal tools.

The main web analytics tools are:

Certification is a guarantee

Given the wide diversity of methods and tools used by job websites for traffic figures, some authorities decided to specialize in the certification of those figures, primarly on a national scale.

What really matters is not so much whether the data is perfectly accurate but rather whether it can be compared based on similar standards according to certifying authorities.

Authorities can:

1° Certify traffic data.
2° Certify a whole web analytics tool.
3° Measure traffic data directly on the website.

The main certifying authorities are:

International initiatives: towards an international standardization

As certifying authorities operate on a national scale, there is a lack of standardization in terms of certifying methods on an international scale. However, the International Foundation of Audit Bureaus of Circulation (IFABC) requests that members apply common standards such as:

• Common definitions of “unique visitor”, “visit” or “page impression”;
• The exclusion of internal traffic and robot or automatically generated page impressions;
• The use of site-centric methods that usually include page tagging.

Here are some examples of definitions provided by the IFABC.