For the 2nd consecutive month, LinkUp is reporting that both new and total job listings indexed from company websites rose from the prior month. In September, new job listings increased from August by 19,095 (5%), while total job listings rose by 36,388 (4%).

LinkUp is the largest, fastest growing job search engine that only indexes jobs found on corporate websites throughout the U.S. Updated daily, LinkUp’s job search engine includes approximately 850,000 job openings indexed from over 22,000 company websites. Because LinkUp does not allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site, the search engine does not include any garbage listings such as job scams, phishing posts, work-at-home-scams, or old listings. And because LinkUp only indexes jobs from a single source (the employer’s corporate website itself), there are no duplicate listings that pollute aggregator sites such as Indeed and Simplyhired.

In September, 33 states showed an increase in new job listings, while 44 states showed an increase in total job listings.

New and total jobs by category also rose in September, by 6% and 4% respectively. 20 of 31 job categories showed increases in new job listings, while 25 of 31 categories showed an increase in total job openings. Technology, healthcare, and retail categories reported the strongest gains during the month.

While the increases in new and total job listings are smaller than the gains reported in August, the rise in new and total job listings indicates that private sector demand for labor appears to be continuing its expansion. Unfortunately, forecasting the extent to which the increases in new and total job openings translate into actual job growth is far murkier and involves a series of assumptions that are becoming harder and harder these days to make with any degree of certainty.

First, we have added back into our calculations the 46,000 Verizon workers that were on strike last month and were subtracted from the BLS’ Establishment Survey data for August. Second, we believe that there is a good chance that the August numbers will be revised when the BLS report is issued on Friday, but we have not factored that into our forecast. And finally, when we average our paired sets of job data for August, the September numbers actually show a decrease in both new and total job listings. This final point is worth a more detailed explanation.

Because LinkUp is constantly adding new companies to our index, we have to ‘normalize’ the data in order to accurately compare one month to the next. To do this, we take the set of companies indexed by LinkUp on the first day of a given month, and compare the new and total job listings from those companies in that month and the next month. The following month, we do the same thing with a new set of companies that includes the employers that have subsequently been added to the index. As a result of this methodology, we get two sets of numbers for each month – the first when we compare a month (t) to the prior month (t-1), and the second when we compare the month (t) to the following month (t+1). In making our jobs forecast each month, we use the average of the numbers for the prior month, but are limited to only one data point in the current month. (With September, for example, we have to rely on one set of data because we have not yet compared September to October).

Taking into account all of these factors, we arrive at the following data table that includes our forecast for both September’s jobs report that will be released on October 7th and October’s jobs report that will be released on November 4th.

Based on the gains we saw in August, when new job listings rose by 6.9% and total job listings rose by 1.2%, we expect that the jobs report on Friday will be slightly better than August’s report (which, again, we have revised up to a positive 46,000 to account for the Verizon strike). We typically see a 30-60 day lag between our data and the BLS numbers which makes intuitive sense given that a job listings on a company website takes time to translate into an actual hire. Unfortunately, the decrease between the average of our two August data points and September’s LinkUp jobs numbers leads us to believe that only 15,000 jobs will be created in October.

Regardless of how close our forecast is to the actual BLS numbers, there is absolutely no doubt that job growth continues to be stuck in neutral, at best, and might actually be heading back into reverse. When looking at the raw data of the number of job openings on LinkUp in 2011, it becomes obvious that demand for labor is slowing down. For the first time ever, the number of job openings indexed from company websites has dropped below the 90-day rolling average.

If the charts above provide any indication of what’s in store for the next few months or quarters, not to mention the thousands of other gloomy forecasts, the mild anxiety in Washington should be replaced with absolute panic. The ’2nd Great Contraction’ is having a horrendous impact on the economy, 25 million Americans remain out of work or are underemployed, and actual unemployment is north of 16% and probably headed higher. The President’s jobs bill, while better than nothing, is about half of what is required to foster meaningful job growth. Based on extensive analysis from Bridgewater, history has shown that unemployment cannot decline until GDP growth reaches 5%, and in a $15 trillion economy, we need about $750 billion in new spending to get there. The American Jobs Act, with its $447 billion in spending, gets us part of the way there, but it’s not enough. It’s simply not enough. And if Washington doesn’t act soon, and given the abundance of spinelessness and wildly flawed priorities there is no reason to believe it will, my guess is that 2012 is going to be another grim year for the job market.

Last week’s horrendous jobs report, which indicated that the U.S. economy added no jobs in August, was particularly brutal for a number of reasons. First, it was a stark, kick-in-the-gut reminder that we are deep in the midst of what Kenneth Rogoff (Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard) rightly calls the ’2nd Great Contraction.’ This is no ordinary recession, nor even a severe recession. It is, rather, a massive global contraction created by a global economy that was wildly overleveraged for at least a decade. And while we had all hoped that a few months of small but positive job growth might have signaled that we were slowly recovering, August’s report served as yet another clue that we are, most likely, a long way away from solid recovery mode.

Secondly, and far, far less important, was the fact that we missed with our forecast by a mile (or perhaps only by 30 days). Given the steady increases in TOTAL job listings on company websites that we had seen on LinkUp between May and August, combined with increases in NEW job listings in 3 of the past 4 months, we actually increased our already bullish forecast from earlier in August. Unfortunately, the rise in job openings on company websites that we’ve seen all summer has not translated into meaningful job growth, a fact that was echoed by the Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLT) report issued earlier today.

As the JOLT report indicated, job openings in the U.S. rose to a 3-year high of 3.2 million in July, but August’s jobs report of zero growth in non-farm payrolls indicates that businesses are simply not hiring at an equivalent pace. (It should be noted, however, that the private sector added 17,000 jobs in August, and if one adds back the striking Verizon workers, that number jumps to 63,000 private sector job gains – still infinitesimally small, but better than none). As big a fail (as my kids would say) as our botched forecast was last Friday, it could also be the case that we simply missed by a month in our assessment.

While LinkUp data is highly correlated to future job growth, there is an obvious lag between when a company posts a job opening on their corporate career portal and when that listing translates into a hire. In 2010, the average lag time was roughly 30 days. In 2011, that lag time has been extended to about 60 days, and it is possible that it is extending further as companies are increasingly cautious and deliberate about their hiring. What cannot be argued is that companies have dramatically increased the number of openings published on their websites.

In August, job openings jumped from 827,000 on August 1st to 863,000 on August 31st. The 90-day rolling average jumped from 798,000 to 826,000.

Since the beginning of the year, the number of jobs in LinkUp’s job search engine has jumped from 578,000 to 863,000 at the end of August.

To be sure, this number has risen in part because we are indexing job listings from approximately 2,000 more company websites today than we were at the start of 2011. But after accounting for growth in the number of companies indexed by the LinkUp search engine, it is still apparent that companies are adding more openings to their company websites.

The number of job openings per company has grown from just under 30 at the beginning of the year to over 40 openings per company at the end of August. While the initial BLS report for August certainly gave us reason to pause, I’ll gladly take the opportunity to double-down on our bullish forecast and make a few additional predictions:

• August’s jobs numbers will be revised upwards in the September report, and might be revised up again in the October report

• The September jobs numbers will be quite positive

• The October jobs report will be even more positive

It simply cannot be the case that 22,000 companies are posting 863,000 vacuous job openings on their corporate websites. The vast majority of those job openings will eventually be filled by newly hired employees, and the jobs reports from the Department of Labor will, at some point, reflect the increase in demand that we’re seeing today at LinkUp. It may take longer than any of us want or believe will be the case, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

With each month that unemployment in the U.S. remains stubbornly high, focus on the government’s ‘official’ monthly jobs report grows increasingly intense. Unfortunately, while the anticipation surrounding tomorrow’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reached new levels, so too has the uncertainty around what the report will say about job growth across the country. Bloomberg is reporting a consensus forecast of 67,000 jobs created in August, but the range of estimates is extraordinarily high, with a low of -5,000 to a high of +150,000. (I can’t help but wonder if that 150,000 is LinkUp’s forecast from August 3rd.) Seeking Alpha reports a slightly higher consensus estimate of 110,000 jobs, but in any case the clear consensus is that job growth remains anemic and will be less than July’s jobs report.

ADP’s numbers would also indicate that job growth in August will come in below expectations, as they reported yesterday that the private sector added only 91,000 jobs during the month. Economists had expected the ADP number to come in around 100,000. And finally, the Conference Board reported that online job demand fell by 163,900 in August, following declines of 217,000 in July and 100,000 in June. It should be noted, however, that the Conference Board is counting job ads on daily newspaper websites and online, pay-to-post job boards such as Monster, both of which are in advanced stages of obsolescence, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in their numbers.

So if everyone is expecting a disappointing number tomorrow, one might ask where the uncertainty I mentioned above is coming from. Right or wrong, the uncertainty is coming from the disconnect between a pessimistic consensus estimate and a very optimistic 60-day jobs forecast from LinkUp, a job search engine that ONLY indexes jobs from corporate websites (Updated daily, LinkUp’s index contains 877,000 job openings from 22,125 corporate websites as of this morning). LinkUp issued its August jobs report earlier today, and based on the growth in new and total jobs in August, combined with what we reported in June and July, we have revised our August forecast that we issued on August 3rd from a positive 150,000 jobs created in August to a gain of 205,000. As well, based on LinkUp’s data, we expect that 275,000 jobs will be added to the U.S. economy in September, and 435,000 jobs in October.

In August, the companies in LinkUp’s job search engine added 419,000 new jobs to their company websites, an increase of 12% from July. Total jobs on LinkUp increased by 7% in August to 979,000. 45 states showed an increase in new job listings on company websites, while 48 showed an increase in total job openings on company websites.

The growth in LinkUp’s new and total job listings is the largest since January of this year, and the 3rd largest since November of 2009. (The percentage gains for August are slightly different than the state table above because we use an average of the two data sets for July in our ‘paired-month’ methodology that accounts for the addition of new companies into the index).

LinkUp is the fastest growing job search engine on the web and indexes only job openings that are published on company websites. The New York Times’ About.com named LinkUp the best job search engine on the web because of our highly unique value proposition for both job seekers and employers. LinkUp does not list any jobs from other job boards, nor do we allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site. Rather, LinkUp’s job search engine currently lists about 877,000 job openings indexed and updated daily from approximately 22,000 company websites throughout the U.S. As a result of this completely unique approach to job listings online, LinkUp’s search engine does not include any old jobs, scam jobs, phishing jobs, or duplicate listings. Nor do we include job listings from staffing companies, headhunters, search firms, or other 3rd party recruiters. It is for these reasons that our jobs data is so highly correlated to future hiring trends.

With the solid gains in total jobs in June, July, and August, we are forecasting that not only will job growth be strong for the next 60 days, but that it will finally start accelerating. (Our forecasts assume a 60-day ‘lag’ between our data for a given month and the impact on the jobs numbers from the BLS).

Predicting the actual unemployment rate in the near future is far more difficult given the massive uncertainty around the labor-force participation rate and ‘Discouraged’ workers, combined with the churn in the labor market that will undoubtedly result when things start to loosen up, but there is absolutely no doubt that the labor market is improving.

It’s about time.

Despite the turmoil in the markets, fueled in part by the prospect of a double-dip recession and continued weakness in the jobs market (yesterday’s small increase in initial unemployment claims didn’t help), there continue to be some positive signs in LinkUp’s jobs data. First, based on the increase in both new and total job listings indexed from 22,000 company websites across the U.S. in June, we expect that the BLS report for August will show improvement from July’s better than expected report. Second, we are seeing continued growth in August in the number of jobs being indexed by LinkUp’s job search engine.

This morning, LinkUp’s index (which is updated daily) jumped from 838,000 job openings to a record-high 856,000 job openings. As we’ve mentioned in the past, LinkUp ONLY indexes jobs from company websites, so the jobs are always current and there are no phishing jobs, scam jobs, money-mule positions, work-at-home scams, or any of the other garbage listings that pollute job boards and aggregation sites like Indeed and Simplyhired. And because we index jobs from a single source (the hiring company’s website itself), there are no duplicate listings. (For more information on duplication pollution, click here).

Equally as encouraging, the average number of job openings per company jumped to an all-time high of 40. As an aside, the spike in this chart in May was what helped allow us to make an accurate call regarding July’s unexpectedly positive jobs report. (Our jobs data for any given month is highly correlated to the official jobs report 60 days following that month).

In any event, LinkUp’s jobs data for July doesn’t bode well for September’s jobs report, but perhaps August’s numbers will remain strong and we’ll see a decent jobs report in October. It certainly would be welcomed.

Last Wednesday, LinkUp issued its 60-day jobs forecast based on data from its national job search engine. Our forecast for August and September is based on the number of new and total job listings indexed from over 22,000 corporate websites throughout the U.S. in June and July. The increase and decrease in these job openings indexed exclusively from company websites, a number that has hovered around 820,000 for the past few months, is very closely correlated to future hiring and job growth in the U.S. (In fact, LinkUp data from May allowed us to make a very accurate prediction in advance of last Friday’s better than expected BLS job report for July).

While our forecast indicates that the August numbers will be better than July, we expect that job growth will slow down again in September given the 9% drop in new job listings on LinkUp in July and the 1% drop in total job listings last month. (Through internal analysis, we have determined that our jobs data in a given month is more highly correlated to job growth two months later. Interestingly, it was the case a year ago that our data predicted job growth the following month, but that number has extended to two months as employers have lengthened their hiring processes). Despite these decreases in July and the slightly negative implications for job growth in September, there were some other positive data points from the LinkUp numbers in July.

In addition to all of the other data that we collect through our job search engine, one of the data points we closely track each day is the number of job openings in our job search engine. In July, LinkUp listed an average of 824,450 job openings from company websites. More importantly, the rolling 90-day average increased from 765,081 to 797,350, an increase of 4.2%.

Since the beginning of the year, the 90-day average of daily job openings on LinkUp has increased from 566,302 to 797,350 at the end of July. This is an increase of 40.8%. While some of that increase is the result of a slightly improved economy and resulting job growth (however anemic that might be), the growing number of jobs indexed by LinkUp has also resulted from the fact that we are constantly adding new companies to our search engine.

Given the growth in the number of company websites that we index, we also track the average number of job listings per company indexed by LinkUp. This strips out the job growth caused simply by the addition of new companies to the index and presents a more statistically accurate picture of the actual jobs environment in the U.S. Perhaps most encouragingly, the average number of job listings per employer website indexed by LinkUp has increased from 29.42 in January to 38.30 at the end of July. This represents an increase of 30.2% through the first 7 months of the year. Interestingly, the spike in average jobs per company in May is what contributed to the better-than-expected jobs report last Friday.

As a side note, it should also be pointed out that no other site on the web can provide as accurate a count of job openings per company for such a large number of companies in the U.S. Because Indeed and Simplyhired aggregate jobs from thousands of job boards, their sites are plagued by a horrendous amount of duplication that would render their analysis of a similar data set almost completely useless. To illustrate the point, Apple’s website lists 828 job openings on their corporate career portal, and Linkup’s search engine lists exactly 828 job openings for Apple.

Indeed, on the other hand, lists 5,462 jobs for Apple, a ridiculously inflated job count of almost 6x. The 4,634 extra Apple jobs on Indeed come from the Apple classifieds that Indeed sources from thousands and thousands of job boards. These extra job board listings are simply duplicates of Apple’s actual job openings. By aggregating listings from other job boards, Indeed also contains the same garbage that pollutes the typical pay-to-post job board such as old listings, job scams, phishing jobs, identity-theft scams, and money-mule fraud. But because Indeed and Simplyhired generate the majority of their revenue from their job board customers that buy traffic from them, Indeed and Simplyhired cannot remove this garbage from their sites.

So while Indeed might appear to be the largest job site on the web, their job count is wildly inflated due to the fact that their site includes job board pollution and tons of duplicate listings of the same jobs. Not only does this skew their jobs data, but it’s also extremely annoying for job seekers. Simplyhired, by the way, lists 1,223 job openings for Apple – better than Indeed but still well above the 828 actual job openings for Apple.

In any event, we will continue to closely watch our LinkUp data to get a sense of the job growth that is likely to occur in the months ahead.

There is no question that the gloom surrounding the U.S. economy in general and job growth in particular is well founded. Economists have recently slashed their GDP forecasts for the remainder of the year with the specter of a double-dip recession rearing its ugly head once again, and all signs point to persistently high unemployment as far as anyone can legitimately see. The hint of optimism generated by slightly positive jobs reports in March and April proved to be fleeting with the release of dismal BLS reports in May and June that indicated virtually no job growth in the U.S. economy. Consensus estimates for this Friday’s jobs report for July, while improved from May and June, forecast that only 75,000 jobs were created last month. Roughly 200,000 new jobs are needed each month to simply keep pace with population growth, so the established forecasts provide no reason to celebrate. Based on LinkUp’s jobs reports for May and June, however, we are forecasting that Friday’s jobs report, while still depressing, will end up being better than expected. Unfortunately, LinkUp’s jobs data from July points to more negativity this Fall.

LinkUp is the fastest growing job search engine on the web and indexes only job openings that are published on company websites. The New York Times’ About.com named LinkUp the best job search engine on the web because of our highly unique value proposition for both job seekers and employers. LinkUp does not list any jobs from other job boards, nor do we allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site. Rather, LinkUp’s job search engine currently lists about 830,000 job openings indexed and updated daily from approximately 20,000 company websites throughout the U.S. As a result of this completely unique approach to job listings online, LinkUp’s search engine does not include any old jobs, scam jobs, phishing jobs, or duplicate listings. Nor do we include job listings from staffing companies, headhunters, search firms, or other 3rd party recruiters. It is for these reasons that our jobs data is so highly correlated to future hiring trends.

In May, new job listings on LinkUp rose 3.7% to 366,000 and total job listings rose 5.4% to 815,000. In June, both new and total job listings rose again, by 6.3% and 5.2% respectively. Based on that information, we are forecasting that non-farm payrolls grew by 105,000 in July and will grow by an additional 150,000 in August.

Unfortunately, LinkUp’s jobs report for July indicates that hiring will slow substantially in September. New job postings on company websites dropped 9% during the month, while total job listings on company websites fell by 1%. Equally as alarming, 42 states showed a decline in new job listings while only 5 showed an increase in new job listings, each of which was infinitesimal in terms of raw numbers. Only slightly better, 27 states showed a decline in total job listings and 18 showed an increase in total job listings. Given the negative data from our July jobs report, we are forecasting that non-farm payrolls will grow by a scant 70,000 in September.

In terms of jobs by category, the results are equally as dismal, with new jobs by category falling 10% and total jobs by category declining by 1%. The only bright spot in the entire table is Education, where new job listings increased by 36% and total job openings grew by 19%. We are currently conducting some additional analysis to determine the specific drivers of the job opening growth within the education sector.

I’d love nothing more than to be able to issue a more positive forecast for the coming months. Unfortunately, the job openings indexed in July from over 20,000 corporate websites throughout the U.S. indicate that more bad news is in store later this Fall. As much as we’ll be cheering the better-than-expected jobs report on Friday, it does not appear as if there is an end to the horrendous jobs picture anywhere on the horizon.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post (April) and even longer since I’ve written regularly. I have missed it quite a bit, and for the past few months I’ve made and broken a handful of commitment to myself start blogging again. And while I’m not sure it will be any different this time, today’s Wall Street Journal editorial has compelled me to sit down and write my fist post in months.

I’ll leave the politics aside (sort of), and I have no ability or intention to get into the actual details of the phone hacking scandal that is, justifiably it seems, decimating News Corp. My comments relate entirely to the WSJ editorial, for it so perfectly typifies Murdoch’s crumbling empire. In the face of one of the worst cases in recent memory of a media company overstepping boundaries (legal, moral, ethical, and otherwise), the editorial devotes a scant 3 sentences at the very end to actually addressing the horrendous infractions, and what a mockery those sentences actually are in any event. The first 14 paragraphs are spent blaming others, praising News Corp. publishers, bragging about the WSJ since Murdoch’s purchase of the paper, slamming the Bancrofts, blasting the liberal media, the Obama Administration, critics of News Corp., and anyone that might throw a stone at the media in any form. It is egotistical, hypocritical, and vacuous nonsense of the highest order and should serve only to throw gas on the raging fire that is engulfing the company.

In slightly more detail, the editorial makes the following points:

Paragraph 2 – Scotland Yard failed to pursue bribery charges. And this failure is worse than anything anything News Corp did.

Paragraph 3 – British tabloids are awful to begin with, and we did nothing worse than anyone else.

Paragraph 4 – The BBC and The Guardian also try to gain political influence. Why are they escaping similar scrutiny?

Paragraph 5, 6 & 7 – Les Hinton, former Publisher of the WSJ, is a hero and his judgement is sound.

Paragraph 8, 9 & 10 – Rupert saved the WSJ from the greedy Bancrofts who were only interested in dividends and were not investing in real journalism. Criticism of News Corp. stems only from petty competitive rivalries. And how about Julian Assange and Wikileaks – isn’t that far worse than what we did?

Paragraph 11 & 12 – The Obama Administration (There it is!!! It actually took longer to get Obama in there than I would have guessed) and Attorney General Eric Holder are disregarding the Constitution and the First Amendment in their knee-jerk, pile-it-on persecution. The Foreign Bribery Law has no precedent in non-government contract-related cases.

Paragraph 13 & 14 – If this goes any further, media’s freedom to pursue news by any means necessary, specifically via bribery, is in jeopardy. And besides, everyone buys stories, right? We just got caught. Does a civicl society really want government intervention into media practices?

And finally, in Paragraph 15 – “Phone-hacking is deplorable, and we assume the guilty will be prosecuted.” As if ‘The Guilty’ have nothing whatsoever to do with News Corp. And then comes the most offensive part of the entire editorial….”More fundamentally, the News of The World’s offense – fatal, as it turned out – was to violate the trust of its readers by not coming about its news honestly.” Really? That’s the infraction? Not coming about [your] news honestly? What about violating others’ right to privacy, both private and public citizens. What about breaking the law? How about interfering in a criminal investigation? Moral corruption? A complete lack of ethics and integrity? And those are just the big headlines as we know them now. Their will undoubtedly be other bombs dropped as this story unfolds, but equally as important are the thousands of examples already known and those yet to be uncovered of the twisted, warped, and corrupt culture that permeates News Corp. As the editorial rightly points out, in perhaps its only truthful moment, “The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw.” It is. And like so many others, I too will very much enjoy watching New Corp implode. Most people love watching the bad guy lose, as they almost always eventually do. And Rupert Murdoch is one seriously bad dude.

For certain, some of the impact is lost in releasing a jobs report after the Department of Labor has released their monthly data, but such is the case when the first Friday of the month is also the 1st of the month. (I’m not sure why the Conference Board would or could or should release jobs data before the month has actually ended, but so be it). In any event, as everyone certainly knows by now, the Department of Labor figures released last week showed that the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs in March, slightly better than the 190,000 jobs expected by economists. It was the 6th consecutive month of monthly gains, and an improvement over the 194,000 jobs added in February. Unemployment also fell to 8.8%, although that decline in unemployment is due more to a ridiculously low ‘Labor Force Participation Rate’ of 64.2%, a 25-year low, than growth in jobs.

Not surprisingly, LinkUp‘s monthly jobs data for March was also very positive. In fact, all 50 states showed an increase in both new and total job listings on company websites between February and March.  LinkUp, a job search engine that indexes only jobs that are found on company websites, reported that new job listings on company sites throughout the U.S. rose 29% in March, while total job listings on company sites rose 17% during the month. California, Texas, and Virginia added the most job listings, both new and total, and only 4 states showed an increase in either category that was less than 10%.

LinkUp is the fastest growing job search engine on the web and indexes only jobs that are found on company websites. In March, The New York Times’ About.com named LinkUp the best job search engine on the web because of its highly unique value proposition for both job seekers and employers. The search engine does not list any jobs from other job boards, nor does it allow anyone to post jobs directly to the site. Rather, LinkUp currently lists about 725,000 job openings indexed and updated daily from approximately 20,000 company websites throughout the U.S. As a result of this completely unique approach to job listings online, LinkUp’s search engine does not include any old jobs, scam jobs, phishing jobs, or duplicate listings.

In terms of jobs by category, LinkUp’s data from March is equally as positive. New jobs by category rose 33%, while total jobs by category rose 19%. Technology, Healthcare, and Sales showed the largest increases, and only a single decreased registered anywhere in the data (total jobs in Banking declined by 2%).

Press Release

LINKUP WINS ABOUT.COM’S 2011 READERS’ CHOICE AWARD FOR BEST JOB SEARCH ENGINE

NEW YORK, March 15, 2011 – LinkUp today announced that it has been selected as the About.com 2011 Readers’ Choice Award for best job search engine. Now in its fourth year, the About.com Readers’ Choice Awards honor the best products, features and services across more than a dozen categories, ranging from technology to hobbies to parenting and more, as selected by its readers.

“This year’s Readers’ Choice Awards program had a record number of nominations submitted across more than a dozen categories and featured hundreds of finalists,” said Margot Weiss, managing editor, About.com. “We are thankful to all our readers for their participation and congratulate LinkUp on their success.”

To view the LinkUp award and all award winners, please visit http://awards.about.com.

About LinkUp

LinkUp is the fastest growing job search engine on the web today. Completely unique to the industry, LinkUp only indexes those jobs that are found on corporate career websites. As a result, LinkUp offers both job seekers and employers a highly differentiated and compelling value proposition.

For job seekers, LinkUp delivers the largest search engine that contains only job listings sourced from company websites. By eliminating pay-to-post listings and jobs aggregated from other job boards, LinkUp’s search results are free of the job ‘pollution’ that afflicts other sites. There are no duplicate posts, no old jobs, and no work-at-home scams, phishing posts, or job scams. The site leverages leading search technology and directs job seekers, with a single click, to the specific job listing on the employer’s company website where they apply directly into that employer’s applicant tracking system (ATS).

For employers, LinkUp provides cost-effective, performance-based recruitment advertising solutions that are easy to set up, manage and integrate seamlessly with an employer’s existing recruiting strategies. Flexible pay-per-click campaigns and customizable paid search budgets allow companies to meet specific recruiting objectives with complete transparency. LinkUp is able to index every ATS in the market, and the search engine is automatically updated daily to reflect any changes to a company’s corporate career portal. Through LinkUp’s affiliate network, which consists primarily of radio and TV station websites throughout the U.S. as well as niche and career-oriented sites, employers can greatly expand the reach of their campaigns for additional candidate flow.

And finally, for both job seekers and employers, LinkUp offers a variety of sophisticated and popular social and mobile applications that allow both sides of the talent equation to effectively leverage important new media channels and platforms.

About The About Group

The About Group comprises the Web sites About.com, ConsumerSearch.com, and CalorieCount.com. About.com is a valuable resource for content that helps users solve the large and small needs of everyday life. ConsumerSearch.com analyzes expert and user-generated consumer product reviews and recommends the best products to purchase based on the findings. CalorieCount.com is an online resource that helps users solve the everyday challenges of losing weight and living a healthy lifestyle.

The About Group is part of The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), a leading media company with 2010 revenues of $2.4 billion, includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

The polls have closed on About.com’s Reader’s Choice Awards, and the winners will not be announced until next week, but in advance of final certification and the official announcement, LinkUp received the most votes as the best job search engine, beating Google, Indeed, and Simplyhired. As a result of the voting, I couldn’t help but comment on one of Indeed’s LinkedIn discussion groups which was focused on the About.com poll. Unfortunately, just as the exchange between myself and another Indeed fan was getting started, I discovered that my comments were being screened by someone at Indeed and were not being approved. Apparently Indeed is more skilled at filtering their discussion group comments on LinkedIn than they are at filtering their duplicate and garbage job listings on their own site. In any event, I thought I’d post the discussion thread on my blog.

Because of comments like, “When I search for jobs, it’s pretty much a tie between Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com. The rest are far behind.” and “indeed.com is the best”, I posted the following comment:

“I think LinkUp.com was voted the Best Job Search Engine for 2011 in About.com’s Reader’s Choice Awards, and for good reason. LinkUp only indexes jobs from company websites (720,000 jobs from 22,000 company websites), so the jobs listed there are always real and always current, with no duplicates, scam jobs, garbage listings, or phishing jobs. If you want ‘all jobs’ including duplicates, garbage listings, scam jobs, old jobs, and phishing jobs, Indeed and Simplyhired will include those. If you want only real jobs from real companies, then LinkUp is the best job search engine.”

A few comment later, John Fallone (who started the discussion group with the comment, “Indeed.com is absolutely the BEST job search engine. I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again” and later added this witty gem, “When comparing Indeed.com with SimplyHired.com it becomes clear that the search results generated from Indeed are of a higher quality, with superior filtering and better targeted. So, quite “Simply,” if you desire to get “Hired” — use INDEED!) replied:

“Toby, Toby..Is it safe to say you are somewhat biased, given the fact you are the President & CEO of Linkup? Since Linkup only indexes jobs from company websites, there are thousands of real jobs that for various reasons are not featured on company websites which are invisible to Linkup. The overwhelming majority of Indeed jobs are real–not scam or garbage. “One search. all jobs” is still better than One search, NOT all jobs–only some jobs!”

I answered with the following reply, but my comment seems to have been screened and as of this afternoon, has not yet been approved:

“John – It is safe to say I’m biased….not ‘somewhat biased,’ but extremely biased. And I will grant you that there are legitimate jobs that we do not include on LinkUp. Companies that do not have jobs on their company website, for example, cannot have their listings indexed by LinkUp.

But by only indexing jobs from company websites and not aggregating jobs from other job boards, we’ve eliminated the sources of job pollution (old jobs, scams, phishing, resume collectors, money-mule ads, duplicate listings, etc.) that plague not only the pay-to-post job boards, but also aggregators like Indeed and Simplyhired that include job board listings.

With 100% of LinkUp jobs being sourced only from corporate websites, we’ve created a far better experience for job seekers because the jobs are always real and always current (we update our search engine daily). Equally as important, when a job seeker clicks on a job on LinkUp, they are directed straight to that specific job on the hiring company’s website where they can apply directly into the hiring company’s applicant tracking system. There isn’t another job search engine on the web that can guarantee that direct of a connection between the job listing and the hiring company for 100% of its job listings.

To give you sense of how massive a problem duplicate listings are, and this is just one of those pollution sources, take a look at Comcast. Comcast has 336 job openings on their corporate website. There are exactly 336 job openings on LinkUp for Comcast. Yet Indeed lists 4,690 job openings for Comcast, from hundreds of different job boards. That’s 14 times the number of actual job openings. Put another way, 93% of the job listings on Indeed for Comcast are either duplicative or fake. How does that serve job seekers? Microsoft is another perfect example: 2,337 jobs for Microsoft on their corporate website, with the exact same number of Microsoft jobs on LinkUp, but there are 11,528 job listings for Microsoft on Indeed. That’s more than 9,000 garbage listings on Indeed for one company.

On the other side of the coin, for example, Twitter has 47 job openings on their corporate site, and LinkUp lists each of those 47 jobs with Twitter in its search engine. On Indeed, a job seeker can only find 10 of those jobs.

So clearly Indeed doesn’t have ‘All Jobs’ as you apparently believe. More importantly, as demonstrated by Comcast and Microsoft, what job seeker would want all of Indeed’s jobs given that the vast majority of them are duplicate listings and job board pollution?”

So John, if you’d like to continue our conversation without risk of having comments filtered and screened, feel free to post your comments on Diggings. I’d be curious to hear what you have to say.