Expired Job Handling

Unlike blog posts that live indefinitely, job listings have a lifecycle: they're posted, they drive traffic while active, and then they expire when the position is filled or the deadline passes. How you handle that expiration affects both your SEO and your users' trust.

The expired job problem

When a job expires, the URL doesn't disappear. Job seekers may have bookmarked it, shared it, or found it through a search engine that hasn't yet re-crawled the page. If they land on a "page not found" error, that creates a dead end. Too many dead ends waste Google's crawl budget, erode user trust, and dilute your site's quality signals.

How Cavuno handles expired jobs

When a job reaches its expiry date, Cavuno automatically removes it from job search results on your board, removes it from the sitemap so Google stops prioritizing it for crawling, and handles the page gracefully so visitors see a clear message that the job has expired along with suggested similar jobs and easy navigation to find other opportunities.

Best practices for job expiry

Set appropriate expiry dates

Standard roles work well with a 30-day expiry (the default). Hard-to-fill positions may warrant 60 to 90 days. Urgent hiring can use shorter windows of 14 to 21 days. Evergreen roles can extend to 60+ days, but should be refreshed regularly.

Avoid long expiry dates

Don't set jobs to expire years in the future. Stale listings hurt credibility with both job seekers and search engines. Job seekers distrust old postings, and Google may penalize sites with outdated content.

Refresh rather than extend

Instead of extending an expiry date indefinitely, let the job expire, then repost it with fresh content and any updated requirements. This gives the listing a new "date posted" signal, which tells Google your content is current and keeps your board looking active.

The backfill advantage

If you use backfill, expired external jobs are automatically replaced with new matching listings. This creates a self-refreshing content cycle that keeps your board populated and signals freshness to search engines.

Monitoring expired job impact

In Google Search Console, check the Pages report for excluded pages, monitor crawl stats for efficiency, and watch for 404 errors that might indicate broken internal links. Signs that your expired job handling is working well: indexed page count stays relatively stable, there's no spike in crawl errors, and user engagement metrics remain strong.