Ghost Jobs: The Dark Side of Branded Search

When brands post ghost jobs for SEO gains, who you gonna call?

In March 2025, a high-profile industry newsletter went out to thousands of SEOs and digital marketers with what we think is a fairly controversial tip. It concerns branded search, something of a hot topic after a few insightful Google leaks pointed to its importance in the search rankings.

We won’t call out the newsletter because we’re not about naming and shaming (and it’s actually one of our favourite publications, usually). But it made a couple of rogue suggestions about how to level up your branded search traffic, namely, advertising fake or ‘ghost’ jobs in order to get jobseekers to Google you. Here’s the tip they sent out:

“Run job ads (even if you’re not actively hiring) to generate brand-name searches from jobseekers. Don’t include the link to your company website in the job ad – make candidates Google you!”

Shudder.

In this article, we’ll cover what ghost jobs actually are, why anyone would want to post one, and provide what we think are some less sinister ways to improve your branded search performance.

What is a Ghost Job?

We know that sometimes, companies will have an open call for CVs on their website, or keep an old vacancy open if the right applicant hasn’t been found, but this is something else altogether. 

Ghost jobs are adverts for jobs that literally don’t exist. The company aren’t hiring – and don’t plan to, but for any number of reasons decide to post a vacancy online. They’re usually found on job boards like LinkedIn Jobs or Indeed, lurking in the shadows.

Who is Posting Ghost Jobs? And Why?

A survey of 1,641 hiring managers last year revealed that a shocking 40% of companies admit to posting ghost jobs, with 13% of those companies posting 75 or more fake roles in the space of a year.

And if that makes your blood run cold, then you might want to be sitting down for this.

The Chilling Reasons Companies Post Fake Jobs:

• To create the illusion of growth
• To mislead employees into believing their workload will be alleviated
• To make employees feel replaceable (yikes)
• To collect resumes or data

According to the survey, those are the main reasons companies have historically posted ghost jobs. But jobseekers are now contending with a new shady school of thought; that there are SEO gains to be had from advertising ghost jobs.

The name of the game? Branded search.

What is Branded Search?

Branded search refers to when users are searching specifically for your brand name, product or service, or when their search queries include your brand.

“Royal Mail tracking”

“IKEA roman blinds”

“Papa Johns vs Dominos”

Branded search will signal strong credibility to search engines, and if the Google leaks are to be believed, it’s a ranking factor with some weight behind it.

Search engines know that there’s strong intent and trust behind a branded search, which go hand-in-hand with high clicks and low bounces.

In a nutshell, if users are searching for your keywords and your brand, it’s a ringing endorsement when search engines are deciding who to prioritise in the SERPs, and what to show in related searches.

“When many users are searching for a specific term, such as “3M chemical goggles,” instead of just “chemical goggles,” Google starts to show that particular term in its suggestions over time. If branded keyphrases become more popular, they move higher in the suggestions list.”

Greg Heilers, Moz

The Human Cost of ‘Gaming’ Branded Search

While we accept that ‘black hat SEO’ (unethical/manipulative SEO tactics) can get quick results that might impress clients initially, gaming the system is rarely future-proof.

Google will get wise to any loophole eventually, and a history of hacky, spammy practices is likely to do more harm than good to your brand. Reputation takes years to build, and seconds to destroy.

When it comes to ghost jobs, any shortsighted wins (if they even work) will have been at the expense of real people going through tough times. So there’s a significant human cost attached.

We spoke to Paul, a father of two and a content marketer with a decade of experience who’s been looking for a job for about five months.

“Real job applications and interviews are hard enough to get genuine responses and feedback from. To know some brands are willingly wasting applicants’ time, people who are often desperate to find work to provide for their families in a highly competitive job market, is frustrating but ultimately unsurprising.”

Hunting through poorly targeted job ads for hours on end, paying to access paywalled opportunities, jumping through endless hoops, and being rejected or ghosted by roles you’re overqualified for, all take a huge mental toll on beleaguered jobseekers. 

Meanwhile, household outgoings continue to soar to record levels. Just last week, the charity Citizens Advice said the finances of millions in the UK were “stretched beyond breaking point” even before April’s rise in energy and council tax bills.

It’s a jungle out there, and you only need to spend five minutes on the subreddit /r/UK Jobs to understand how cruel it can be. At the time of writing, these are some of the top posts of the day:

• ‘I’ve applied for over 1,500 IT jobs in the last 6 months in the UK with zero progress’’
• ‘A 3 day test for an entry-level social media role. I give up.’
• ‘Finally got a job after almost 3 years of active searching’
• ‘Today I applied for my 400th job in 2 years’
• ‘Got asked to do an AI interview…’

Hannah Ellis, Founder of Sheffield Young Professionals, spends a lot of time talking careers with the region’s most promising talent, and had this to say about ghost jobs:

“Applying for jobs is a time-consuming and mentally taxing task at the best of times. And if you’re out of work when applying for roles, the pressure is tenfold.”

“Spending time filling out applications and proceeding to hear nothing back can be soul destroying – these fake listings are exploiting people’s ambition and self-esteem purely for their own gain.”

We’re inclined to agree.

Posting ghost jobs is unethical, and unethical SEO practices have no place in your marketing strategy.

So, with the exorcism complete, let’s talk instead about what you should do.

5 Better Ways to Improve Branded Search Volume

Let’s explore some practical steps you can take to improve your branded search metrics that won’t leave exhausted job hunters crying into their cornflakes.

1) Say More, Help More, Give Stuff Away

You do stuff, so you probably know stuff. Just like writing these blog posts, not only is it something we enjoy doing at The SEO Works, but it’s something we’re good at, because we solve SEO challenges for our clients all day long. If you’ve got some experience, you can help people, and helpful content will drive interest and get people Googling you.

Take Moz for example, quoted earlier in this article. Moz made its name in the SEO space by creating and sharing a ton of high-quality educational content for free, engaging with their target audience.

When I first started out in SEO, I soaked up everything I could from the Moz Academy, and up until recently (when it became less free), I’d send folks to their site to learn more about SEO.

Google’s own guides recommend “creating helpful, reliable, people-first content” if you want to impress their automated ranking systems. To perform well in search, we should all be posting content that demonstrates “first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge”. It’s all right there in the user manual, people!

And what’s that old customer service adage, “serve before you sell”? 

You could write blogs, appear on industry podcasts, build cool little tools like Whitespark’s Freshness Calculator or our handy Title Generator, and give them away for free. Or put a bunch of useful resources up on your site like our webinars, whitepapers and helpsheets.

If you really have a lot to say, you could even write a book. Gil Gildner from Discosloth (a digital agency who publish marketing titles like The Beginner’s Guide to Google Ads) writes,

“Books that we wrote back in 2017 are still paying dividends. In the past couple of years, we have gotten to the point where we have so many brand searches & inbound inquiries that we essentially don’t have to do sales anymore.”

Lucky for you, Gil.

2) Engage Your Audience Where They Hang Out

You probably have a good idea who your target audience are, but we suggest creating some customer personas (using data to build profiles of your ideal customers) and start engaging with them in the spaces they spend time online and off. You could:

• Sponsor their favourite podcast or industry event
• Contribute thoughtfully to popular threads on social media
• Run ads on their favourite YouTube channels
• Run display ads on relevant online communities
• Be super active and helpful in their favourite subreddits
• Pull back the curtain with a practical, behind-the-scenes ‘how I did this’ type case study that helps them achieve a common goal

3) Leverage Digital PR

To encourage organic brand mentions, you can utilise Digital PR tactics by offering insights or data that authoritative publications will want to reference or quote.

Mikaila Storey heads up our Digital PR Team, and has this to say:

“The more visible your brand is, the more familiar people will become with it, searching for your company to get additional info or purchase products.”

Mikaila suggests having a few Digital PR tactics up your sleeve that can generate brand mentions to boost visibility:

• Sharing company news and case studies
• Providing expert commentary and insights on relevant topics 
• Creating and sharing data-led campaigns with unique data
• Reacting to trending relevant news stories with different angles

Increasing brand awareness and mentions can be tricky, especially in very niche or competitive industries, but trialling different approaches and tactics can pay off and help to increase branded searches.

4) Reviews: When Stars Align

Both as marketers and consumers, we all recognise the value and importance of customer reviews. These days, savvy shoppers will append ‘reddit’, ‘trustpilot’ or even ‘legit?’ to the end of a branded search before even entertaining the idea of engaging with you. This is all about credibility and trust.

Now, we’re not saying that having great online reviews is going to directly send you huge droves of branded search traffic, but there are less obvious ways that it can help.

Genuine product reviews often appear on sites like Yelp, G2, Capterra, Quora, and Reddit. When people see these reviews but want more info, they take to Googling you. I’ve personally taken screenshots of Reddit comments recommending a product, earmarking it to look up later.

Here’s one I found on my phone. I later Googled the brand and bought their earplugs after seeing several people vouch for them online.

This can be really powerful for smaller brands, where having a bit of a cult following amongst your core audience can help you compete with the big incumbents.

If your brand is well-reviewed, you also stand a better chance of being featured in rich results. This is a bit like an unofficial stamp of approval from Google, which could lead to people searching for your brand later on when they’re further down the funnel.

So whatever you can do to encourage your customers to review you online (and not just on the big review sites) will contribute to your branded search performance, as well as your conversions.

5) Post Real Jobs!

Here’s the big plot twist. We do think posting job vacancies increases branded search volume, and we do recommend you do it. When you’re actually hiring.

There’s no harm in posting your genuine job ads across multiple job boards and all over social media, in fact, it’s a good idea. You’re casting a wider net and, in theory, stand a better chance of reaching the right candidates.

Posting about a vacancy on social media means you can also attract passive candidates – those who aren’t actively looking for a new role, but might be open to one.

So there you have it – what not to do, and what to do instead. Take what you read in newsletters with a pinch of salt (and a healthy glug of integrity), and trust your gut. If it feels shady, it probably is.

To end on a quote (shoutout to GCSE English):

“Don’t be evil.” – Google, before adopting a more scalable approach to morality.

– Update: Since being interviewed for this article, Paul has landed a marketing role with a well-known travel brand. Nice one, Paul! 💪