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.

Automatic job expiry covers backfill, CSV or XML imports, recurring feeds, and jobs you add yourself. If the original posting is gone, the listing expires the same way a timed expiry does. Paid submissions are left for you to expire.

The expired job problem

When a job expires, job seekers may still have it bookmarked or find an old search result. If the page was deliberately removed, a correct 404 or 410 response tells search engines that it is gone. If the URL remains live, it must stop advertising the role as open and should give visitors a route to active listings.

How Cavuno handles expired jobs

When a job expires, Cavuno removes it from active search results, listing pages and the sitemap, usually within five minutes of its expiry date. A backfilled job expires as soon as Cavuno detects that the original posting is gone.

The job's URL then returns an HTTP 404 status. It does not redirect. The page tells visitors that the job is no longer available, inside your board's navigation, and it carries no JobPosting structured data. If you connected the Google Indexing API or IndexNow, Cavuno also notifies search engines that the URL was removed.

Google accepts several ways to expire a job: set validThrough in the past, remove the page with a 404 or 410, or remove the JobPosting structured data. See Google's expired job guidance.

Best practices for job expiry

Set appropriate expiry dates

Set the expiry date to the real application deadline or the date when you expect to review whether the role is still open. Cavuno's default is 30 days, but the appropriate date depends on the employer and role.

Avoid long expiry dates

Don't use a distant expiry date to keep a closed role looking active. Google requires expired postings to be updated or removed promptly, and stale listings mislead job seekers.

Refresh rather than extend

Extend an expiry date only while the same role remains open. If an employer opens a genuinely new requisition, create a new posting with the correct date and requirements. Do not change dates only to make an old listing appear fresh.

The backfill advantage

If you use backfill, expired external jobs are replaced with new matching listings. This keeps active inventory available without presenting closed external roles as open.

Monitoring expired job impact

In Google Search Console, use the Pages report and URL Inspection tool to check how Google sees specific expired URLs. A 404 or 410 is expected when a page was deliberately removed; investigate when an internal link or active job points to one. Also test that expired pages no longer advertise the role as open and that visitors can reach active listings.

Next steps

Open a recently expired job in a signed-out browser and confirm that it returns a 404 with no JobPosting markup. Then inspect the URL in Search Console and review Google for Jobs for the structured-data expectations on active listings.