Google has revised its guidelines, cautioning users that not removing expired job postings might lead to a manual action penalty.
Google has altered its requirements for job postings: “Failure to take timely action on expired jobs may result in a manual action.”
These guidelines specifically apply to job positions published on a website using job posting markup. The new guidelines should not impact web pages for job openings that have not been marked up with structured data. When a job posting is no longer available, site owners can avoid penalties by either removing the job posting markup, removing the entire page, or adding a noindex tag to the job posting.
Some might argue that a manual action is a drastic measure against expired job postings. Nevertheless, this will help prevent users from finding and applying for jobs that are no longer available.
This raises the question — if there’s no deadline indicated on the job posting, how will Google know when it’s expired? Google would presumably have to rely on users to report expired job postings. The search quality team would then have to confirm that the job position is not available anymore.
On one hand, this could reduce the number of expired job postings appearing in Google Search. On the other hand, this seems like a challenging guideline to enforce.
