• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 7, 2005

Yahoo! added a vertical search engine to its HotJobs service earlier this week. The change echoes two current trends--one, of general search engines branching off into specialized verticals, and the other, a swelling of online alternatives to print classifieds.

A big yellow search tab on the HotJobs site now leads users to the engine, dubbed Job Search. On the site itself, job seekers can then narrow their results by geographic location, when jobs were posted, industry, and years of experience required. Users can also search exclusively through listed companies.

Results from the engine are organized into three categories including sponsored results, "featured" results--or sponsored listings with less prominent placement--and natural search results, which are added to Yahoo!'s job index once its spiders have found them.

Referring to a Jupiter Research report released in March--"Vertical Search: Early Marketers Will Reap Rewards of Low Pricing"--analyst Niki Scevak said: "Broad-based search engines are extremely good at navigating vast amounts of information, but extremely poor at helping a consumer make a purchase decision." He added: "This creates a large opportunity to enhance the consumer experience with vertical search."

May job postings on HotJobs climbed to 589,883 from 464,259 in May 2004, which is consistent with other online classified sites. Corzen, a New York research firm, reported that May job postings on the CareerBuilder site rose to 1,322,812 last month from 1,105,120 in May 2004, and Monster job listings increased from 998,544 to 1,157,576.