The Glassdoor Blog Hub
Three blogs, one place to read about work
Client
Glassdoor
Role
Hands-on designer, workshop to launch
Team
2 PMs, content lead, copywriter, 3 engineers, SEO, analytics
Timeline
2023–2024 · launched July 2024
Overview
The Glassdoor Blog is where job seekers read about finding work, negotiating pay and growing a career. I redesigned it in 2021 and tested a new home page in 2022. In 2023 Glassdoor set out to merge it with the employer and economic research blogs into one hub, known internally as the Content Hub. Our creative director set the vision. I was the hands-on designer, from the first workshop to launch in July 2024.
3
blogs merged into one hub
23
Glassdoor domains on one design
3 months
of traffic growth after launch
Source: Glassdoor analytics (Amplitude), US blog unique users, 2024.
01
Problem
Three Glassdoor blogs competed with each other for readers and search ranking, and traffic to all three had been falling since 2022.
Readers had to visit several sites to find what they needed, and content couldn’t be cross-promoted between them.
One home for every reader. Job seekers, employers and researchers needed one place, without losing what each came for.
Design for search. Most readers arrive from a search result, one article deep, and many don’t know Glassdoor’s other features.
Many markets, one system. The blogs ran across 23 Glassdoor domains in six languages.
02
Organizing three blogs around topics
I worked with two PMs, a content lead, a copywriter and three engineers. Five decisions shaped the hub:
Crawl before we run. With a small team, we phased the work: discovery, then taxonomy and backend, then merging the blogs under a new home and navigation, with new features last.
Navigate by topic. Our content lead owned the taxonomy; I drew the information architecture on top of it: a local navigation by reader goal, like Finding a Job and Negotiate Your Salary, instead of by which blog a post came from.
Bring the community into the blog. The hub home featured Glassdoor community “bowls,” so readers could go from an article to a conversation.
Build only what content can support. We deferred video, infographic and quiz post types until there was enough content to fill them.
Move every market together. The plan to leave international blogs on the old platform was reversed, and we rethought retiring one content block once we found German posts used it 72 times.
Where we changed course
The community block converted poorly; readers arriving from search didn’t know what a bowl was. Previous and next links we removed in the redesign came back on the SEO team’s advice. And the blog launched as “Work In Progress,” our copywriter’s tongue-in-cheek nod to the world of work. A year later a test found plain “Glassdoor Blog” performed better, and we renamed it.
03
Outcome
Launched July 2024, across the US and six international markets.
Traffic turned around. After a year-long decline, US blog readership grew for three months after launch.
Search worked better. Completed searches rose after launch, a sign the new navigation and search were helping readers find articles.
Then priorities moved. Traffic fell again from December 2024, and in July 2025 the hub moved to maintenance mode as web work shifted to other launches. It still runs on the design we shipped.
04
What I learned
Design for how people actually arrive. Most readers came from search, one article deep. The community block assumed they already knew Glassdoor; they didn’t.
Clear beats clever. We loved “Work In Progress.” Readers preferred “Glassdoor Blog.”
A redesign can’t outrun how people find content. The launch reversed the decline for a season. My read is that AI search summaries have since changed how people look for career advice, and next time I’d design for readers who get their answer without ever reaching the page. The first test I’d run: compare search traffic before and after AI summaries appeared for our top career-advice queries, to see whether we lost visits or just clicks.
