December 2018 Newsletter
Summary
We’ve changed how we pull job openings to include in your search results. Also, tips on making the transition to a new website more smooth.
Jobs Search Update
Search.gov is now integrated with the USAJOBS API!
Federal agencies post thousands of openings across the country on USAJobs.gov. Search.gov helps our customers share relevant job posting information with people searching agency websites.
Several years ago, Search.gov developed an API to support our USAJOBS search integration, and allow others to access job postings via API. We collected the information for this search API from an FTP site. With the new USAJOBS API we can tap directly into their up-to-date list of jobs openings across the Government.
We are planning to sunset our own jobs API in the near future. If you are using our jobs API now, please check out the USAJOBS API documentation and begin making plans to switch over. If you have any questions, please let us know.
SEO Pro Tip
‘Tis the season to launch new sites
Do you have a new website launching soon? If so, congrats! Also, be sure to think about how your new site’s content will be picked up by search engines. If you don’t take some proactive measures, your old URLs will continue to appear in your search results and send people to error pages. Search engines often hang on to URLs that error, or 404, in case the error itself is mistaken.
Talk to us ahead of time!
We can work with you to make sure we have the new site indexed and ready to search at the time of your big launch.
Publish an XML sitemap of your new site’s URLs, and reference that sitemap in your /robots.txt file.
Keep your old URLs available wherever possible, putting 301 redirects on them to the page’s new location. If you can’t do this for every page, ask your server team if they can place 301 redirects on entire folders using Regex. Any URL in those folders can redirect to the new landing page for that type of content.
Review our Checklist for a Successful Website Redesign, which includes to-do items in our Admin Center, in your system, and in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Watch our How Search Engines Index Your Websites webinar recording to understand how different systems fit together to produce a search experience.
Release Notes
Want to learn about the latest features, fixes, and focuses of the Search team? We post monthly Release Notes on our website.