Late last month Yahoo announced a new algorithm for its HotJobs service that would rank jobs on the basis of factors symbolized by REAL (Relevance, Engagement, Availability and Location).

An excerpt from Cheezhead

Jeff Kinder, Y! Hotjobs senior vice president and general manager, says "Yahoo! has shown that relevance matters in search results, and it's powerful to apply Yahoo!'s search technology to HotJobs and see immediate and significant performance improvements. We believe Yahoo! HotJobs has a distinct advantage as online recruitment evolves and insights and technology play increasingly important roles."

The search algorithm will tap lot of information in postings that job seekers would be considering when looking for a job. These would include the availability, the location and also inherently measure how well the job seekers are responding to the results.

That is a lot of algorithmic life that Yahoo is injecting in the HotJobs service. It is to be seen if the offering compels other vendors in the job listing market to follow suite.