Being an Internet Job Spider I look at a lot of websites containing jobs. This includes corporate websites, SME websites, recruitment agency websites and job boards across the UK. As well as fetching data from our clients we also operate a tracking service to monitor applications and their sources, such as Google or Allthetopbananas.com.

I have been reviewing the applications to job ratios across these sites. It is very interesting; the analysis has resulted in a 30 point recruitment agency website check list covering many aspects such as SEO, jobseeker interaction, obstacles to application, DDA, searching jobs, brand presence etc. The aesthetic appearance is so personal that this is not included at all.

With this 30 point check list Allthetopbananas.com is reviewing websites, scoring them and publishing the BRAWI – The Banana Recruitment Agency Website Index! Sorry we couldn't think of a snappy name. If you have any better ideas send them over!

Only the index score will be published, if you wish to have a full detailed analysis of your site with clear recommendations on how to improve it please contact our sales consultants on 0871 4343438.

The 30 point check list does not require anything that's technically difficult – every job site should be able to achieve top score. Unfortunately however not many score a full 200 points! This is a great shame, as it is seriously affecting the online job seeking experience for the 12+ million online jobseekers in the UK.

When a search engine spider like myself or my well known friend, GoogleBot (the Google Search Spider), visits a web page, we read all the text. When a jobseeker searches for a keyword, this text is analysed to see if the keyword is present and relevant.

Does your job advert contain the right information? What do jobseekers search for?

Location, Location, Location – the majority of jobseekers are pragmatic; they are searching for a suitable job, not the dream job. Research shows that only about 20% of a jobseeker's life/work balance makes them focused careerists. This means that 80% of jobseekers will put their non-work commitments very high – such as location of children’s school, extended family, friends, house etc. Most people will not move for a job, so location is normally a big job seeking search criteria.

Make sure your job adverts provide an accurate location – not South East or Cambridgeshire but an actual town / city name.

When jobseekers search on Allthetopbananas, we return jobs within x miles from the town entered – make sure your jobs are getting the best exposure!

Do you Hoover the house, or do you vacuum it? Even if you have a Dyson I bet you still Hoover the house don’t you?

Do you ask for a Coke in the pub even though you know they sell Pepsi?

If I asked you to name one brand who makes jeans I bet you would say “Levis”

If I asked you to name one men’s razor company you would say “Gillette”

Sellotape is a brand. How many times have you said “Pass me the clear sticky tape...”?

At allthetopbananas.com we understand the importance of brand awareness, that’s why we have created some new sections on our site to help with brand presence.

Keeping your name in front of a customer is important. You want to build trust with them and have them see you as a reputable company. The more a customer sees your name or logo the more they will start to remember you as a company.

Every minute on our site we have over 250 jobs viewed by our jobseekers. Every one of those jobseekers have searched for a keyword, whether that is a particular job they are interested in e.g. “Telesales”, or whether it is a location e.g. “Manchester”.

To help get the very best results and build that special brand awareness we have created a section where you can purchase keywords. Every keyword purchased will have a skyscraper advert running down the side of every page with that keyword on it.

(See what it looks like http://www.allthetopbananas.com/Jobs/IT.aspx )

So if you are a specialist in a sector or want to become the number 1 in the town/city you advertise in then why not stand out from the rest? Show that you're the most professional and the biggest in your field. The keywords you purchase are yours for the year.

You never know, maybe one day we will no longer be job searching but Banana-ing!

We're also working on some more keyword based advertising opportunities at the moment, so keep your eyes peeled!

I have been pretty busy over last 10 months reading over 1.3 million job adverts from across the UK. Perhaps the most interesting area of the job advertisement is the job title.

The job title is the first part of the advert I read and when I search for jobs, and I typically search for specific job titles. This is getting more difficult as the diversity of job titles increases. There are just so many different titles for the same job. Have you noticed this?

For example,

“PA, Personnel Assistant, Secretary...” or “Developer, Software Engineer, Programmer...” or “Account Manager, Sales Executive, Business Development Manager...”

Since I am in a unique position of reading so many job adverts (over 1 in 3 job ads in the UK) I am going to start to log which job titles are similar roles. When I have a suitable job search thesaurus written I will add it to the Allthetopbananas.com search so it can help you when you are looking for a new job.

• Job title
• Salary
• Location
• Job category
• ...and most of all, a nice long job description!

I get really upset when I only have a couple of sentences to tell the job seeker about your job. I want to be as helpful as possible. If you let me have more information I can give the job seeker more information about your jobs. Not only that, but the more information I have about your job, the more likely I am to show it to job seekers.

So please, I beg you, get as much information included in your job postings as possible.

(Please do. You don’t have to live with his complaining... Ed.)

I just thought I'd update you on an exciting new system that we've recently put in place - Email Alerts. We've sent our users emails before, but this is quite different.

Our systems have been scouring through the database, analysing the data to figure out exactly what each of our users are looking for. If you're already a registered jobseeker, you should be receiving (or have already received) a regular email, alerting you to recent jobs that you might be interested in.

Now you can adjust how often you receive the alerts by logging in to allthetopbananas.com then clicking the 'Edit Profile' button.

So what effects the selection of jobs we send you? We look at a number of factors when trying to figure out what to send you, such as:

 - What keywords you have previously searched with

 - What jobs you have previously clicked on

 - What searches you have saved as "favourite searches"

 - What jobs you have saved as "favourite jobs"

We then adjust all these factors based on:

 - How recently you've performed these actions

 - How often you've performed these actions

So, if you're not already registered, sign up now and start receiving handy job results straight to your inbox!

Recently I've been looking at some of the Windows Live Services that Microsoft are offering. There are various services that can be used to build social networking sites, create maps of local areas, integrate with live login for security (So you could use your hotmail account to log into allthetopbananas.com, for example) and the usual array of photo and video hosting features. Used correctly, they could really accelerate the way we add new features to the site.

I've been playing with the mapping functionality recently, and we have a few ideas on ways we can take advantage of Windows Live services to bring some interesting new features to the site. It's all experimental at the moment, so keep an eye out.

Well today is November 9^th 2007, the day the British Public get their hands on the latest web gadget... the Apple iPhone. With all its great features, such as hi res screen, wi-fi, touch screen, pinch zoom, music player and sexy looks, I am sure it will sell like hot cakes!

But as if all the iPhone features were not enough, you can now rush out to buy one knowing the Allthetopbananas.com works really well and fast on the iPhone and the iTouch.

Both use a version of the Safari browser and are full graphics on a mobile device. Perhaps the best feature as a mobile web device is how great text looks and how easy it to move around a page while zooming in and out!

Nice one Apple – cannot wait to see what the competition bring out.