Unemployment and redundancy revisited

Robin Goad at Hitwise revisits searches for ‘redundancy’ following his first review in June, discussed by me here.

Goad notes a large increase in searches for ‘redundancy’ related terms and ‘unemployment’ related terms, but also a large increase in the range of distinct variations searched for.

Directgov is the destination for a large (and increasing*) proportion of these searches

“Over half the people searching for ‘redundancy’ (63.8%), ‘job seekers allowance’ (56.7%) and ‘unemployment benefit’ (55.1%) currently visit the government site Directgov. The five most popular employment search terms driving traffic to Directgov over the 4 weeks ending 8th November were ‘worktrain’, ‘job seekers allowance’, ‘income support’, redundancy’ and ‘job seekers allowance (sic)’.”

A search on Google for these terms gives the following results:

rank/term	redundancy	Job Seekers Allowance	unemployment benefit
Sponsored	–	Directgov	Directgov
1st	Directgov	Jobcentreplus	Working Rights
2nd	Directgov	Job Seekers Allowance	Working Rights
3rd	BERR	Directgov	DWP (PDF)
4th	BERR	DSDNI	DWP (PDF)

The two Directgov sponsored lnks show the value of including sponsored results to help users navigate. Unemployment benefit is no longer an ‘official term’ and so the natural search results from the public sector are not particularly helpful. The sponsored link points users to a helpful hub page about help and support with looking for work.

*In the period ending in June 54.6% of searches for the basic term ‘redundancy’ went to Directgov.

Redundancy searches: employee and employer behaviour

On his Hitwise blog, Robin Goad notes an increase in searches related to redundancy.

“The top site visited by people searching for the term is a government site for businesses, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), which received 44.2% of traffic; it was followed by My Business (11.1%), a small business advice site. On the other hand, the majority of people searching for the basic term ‘redundancy’ (54.6%) went to the more consumer / public / voter focussed government site, Directgov. Of the people searching for ‘redundancy payments’, 53.4% went to BERR and 20.9% to Directgov.”

He seems to infer that searchers for ‘redundancy’ are employees and searchers for ‘redundancy calculator’ are employers looking to pay people off – presumably on the basis of which site they chose (Directgov for citizens and BERR for businesses). Although he does make the caveat that BERR and My Business are well optimised for ‘redundancy payment’