Indeed Job Search

Purpose

Given a search input — full Indeed search URL, free-form keyword + location, keyword only, location only, or a direct /viewjob?jk=<jk> URL — return structured JSON job results matching the full Indeed filter surface (keyword, location, radius, date posted, salary, job type, experience level, remote/hybrid, company, education, "posted by", "encouraged to apply", sort order, pagination). For each posting return Indeed jk, title, company + rating + review count, location with remote/hybrid flags, salary (formatted + raw min/max/currency/period/source), posted date (relative + ISO), job type, snippet, qualifications, benefits, urgent-hiring / easily-apply / sponsored flags, company logo URL, canonical viewjob URL, and the company profile URL when linked. Capture total result count and pagination metadata so the caller knows the slice is partial. Read-only — never click Apply, Save Job, Sign In, Easy Apply, or submit any form.

When to Use

• "Find software engineering jobs in Austin posted in the last 3 days under $200k full-time" — multi-filter SERP extraction.
• Daily / hourly monitoring of new postings for a saved query (fromage=1 + sort=date).
• Mapping a free-form query ("barista, 30307") into Indeed's q / l / radius URL.
• Single-posting fetch when only a jk or /viewjob?jk=… URL is in hand — skips the SERP entirely.
• Comparing remote vs on-site availability for a role across metros.
• Anywhere the legacy Indeed Publisher API was used — that path was deprecated for new accounts in 2023 (/ita/v1/publisher returns 404 today, confirmed via residential-proxy fetch on 2026-05-18).

Workflow

Indeed is anti-bot-walled (Cloudflare + Akamai-style fingerprinting + a bot-detection redirect to account/login?from=bot-detection-anonymous). The public Publisher API (/ita/v1/publisher) was deprecated. The internal GraphQL endpoint (https://apis.indeed.com/graphql) is Disallow'd in robots.txt for all user agents and is firewalled at the gateway — its OneGraph key is even leaked in the page HTML (oneGraphApiKey: "eac18cd3a45d…") and still won't authorize anonymous traffic. The only viable path is scripted browsing through a Browserbase --verified --proxies session, treating window._initialData (and window.mosaic.providerData["MosaicProviderRichSearchDaemon"]) as the structured-data surface.

1. Parse input → canonical URL

Branch on input shape:

The keyword field accepts boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), quoted phrases, and field prefixes (title:, company:, location:) — pass through verbatim, URL-encode the whole thing.

2. Filter → URL parameter mapping

All filter dimensions in the request must be encoded as query-string params on /jobs?…. Use this table verbatim — every ID below was verified against the embedded filterSettingModel and radiusOptions in MosaicProviderRichSearchDaemon on 2026-05-18.

sc= is a composite-filter slot. Multiple facets concatenate with ;-delimited tokens inside one sc=0kf: block, all URL-encoded together. Example: Remote + full-time + entry level + Indeed Apply →

sc=0kf%3Aattr%28DSQF7%29attr%28CF3CP%29explvl%28entry_level%29%3B&jt=fulltime&iafilter=1

When in doubt: build the URL by clicking the equivalent filters in the rendered SERP and copying the URL from the location bar — the page rewrites sc= in place.

3. Open a Verified + residential-proxy session

SID=$(browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive --verified --proxies | jq -r '.id')
export BROWSE_SESSION="$SID"

Both flags are mandatory. A bare datacenter-IP fetch of /jobs?q=…&l=… returns a 403 "Security Check — Indeed.com" interstitial (59,756 bytes of styled-but-empty HTML — no window._initialData, no jk markers, no filter rail). A --proxies fetch returns the real SERP, but only ~80% of the time — see § Site-Specific Gotchas for the intermittent 401 pattern.

4. Open the search URL and extract window._initialData

browse open "$SEARCH_URL" --remote
browse wait load
browse wait timeout 2500          # SERP cards render progressively after `load`
browse get html body > /tmp/serp.html

Parse window._initialData from the HTML. It is a JS-assigned object literal that begins with window._initialData = { and ends with }; — scan balanced braces (string-aware) from the open brace, decode / → /, then JSON.parse. The data-bearing keys for a SERP:

Per-card data lives inside mosaicData and in the rendered DOM as data-jk="<jk>" anchor attributes — read both to be robust. For each card, derive the canonical URL as https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=<jk>.

If the page is missing window._initialData entirely, check the response:

• Title <title>Security Check - Indeed.com</title> → 403 anti-bot. Release session, create a new one, retry.
• Title <title>Authenticating...</title> → 401 bot-detection-anonymous. Retry on the same session (residential IP rotates) up to 3×, then swap session.

5. (Per posting) Hydrate each jk from /viewjob?jk=<jk>

Card-level data on the SERP is incomplete — salary range, benefits chips, full snippet, qualifications, company rating, and the original-source apply URL all live on the viewjob detail page. For each jk from § 4 that the caller wants enriched:

browse open "https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=$JK" --remote
browse wait load
browse wait timeout 1500
browse get html body > /tmp/vj-$JK.html

/viewjob?jk= is explicitly allowed for Googlebot, Bingbot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User, Claude-SearchBot in robots.txt (and Disallow'd for the bare User-agent: *) — meaning Indeed serves these pages with less friction than /jobs?. Empirically the residential-proxy success rate on /viewjob? is much higher than on /jobs? (0/4 failures in iter-1 vs ~1/5 on SERP).

From the viewjob HTML extract three sources in this order — prefer the deepest source for each field:

1. window._initialData.hostQueryExecutionResult.data.jobData.results[0].job — the GraphQL response that Indeed embeds for SSR. Contains key, title, sourceEmployerName, datePublished (epoch ms), dateOnIndeed (epoch ms), expired, description.html, feed.feedSourceType (EMPLOYER / JOBSITE / STAFFING), tracking.jobClick.url (the /rc/clk?… sponsored-redirect URL), and url (the external apply URL, e.g. an ATS like Greenhouse/Lever/Breezy).
2. window._initialData.jobInfoWrapperModel.jobInfoModel.jobInfoHeaderModel — the company-tab data: companyName, companyOverviewLink (Indeed profile), companyReviewLink, companyReviewModel.ratingsModel.{rating,count} (e.g. 4.4 / 43), companyImagesModel.logoUrl (https://d2q79iu7y748jz.cloudfront.net/s/_squarelogo/256x256/<hash>), companyImagesModel.headerImageUrl, formattedLocation, remoteLocation (boolean), salaryMin / salaryMax / salaryType / salaryCurrency.
3. The <script type="application/ld+json"> block — schema.org JobPosting with datePosted ISO string, description, hiringOrganization, jobLocation, and baseSalary when present. Use this as the canonical posted-date source (ISO 8601 with millisecond precision).

Other top-level _initialData fields worth extracting:

• jobOccupations — array of taxonomy SUIDs (e.g. ["5NN53","EHPW9","HJSX6"]) Indeed has classified the role under.
• benefitsModel.benefits[] — [{key:"EY33Q",label:"Health insurance"}, …] — the benefits chips, with stable per-benefit SUIDs.
• hiringInsightsModel.age — human relative time ("30+ days ago", "Posted today").
• hiringInsightsModel.urgentlyHiringModel — non-null when "Urgently hiring" badge is rendered.
• commuteInfoModel — jobLatitude, jobLongitude, formattedStreetAddress, companyLocation.
• indeedApplyButtonContainer.indeedApplyButtonAttributes — presence of jk + continueUrl indicates "Easily Apply" is supported; absence means the apply flow is off-site.
• sponsored — top-level boolean.

6. Map to output schema and emit

Build the per-posting object using this field-derivation map:

jk                      ← _initialData.jobKey
title                   ← _initialData.jobTitle
company                 ← jobInfoHeaderModel.companyName
company_rating          ← jobInfoHeaderModel.companyReviewModel.ratingsModel.rating
company_review_count    ← jobInfoHeaderModel.companyReviewModel.ratingsModel.count
company_profile_url     ← jobInfoHeaderModel.companyOverviewLink (strip ?campaignid+from+tk+fromjk)
company_logo_url        ← jobInfoHeaderModel.companyImagesModel.logoUrl
location                ← jobInfoHeaderModel.formattedLocation
remote                  ← jobInfoHeaderModel.remoteLocation === true
hybrid                  ← detect "Hybrid" in jobInfoHeaderModel.tagModels or jobLocation string
salary.formatted        ← jobInfoHeaderModel.salaryText (when present)
salary.min / .max       ← jobInfoHeaderModel.salaryMin / salaryMax
salary.currency         ← jobInfoHeaderModel.salaryCurrency
salary.period           ← jobInfoHeaderModel.salaryType  // "yearly" | "hourly" | "monthly"
salary.source           ← "employer" if hiringInsightsModel.employerProvidedSalary
                          else "indeed_estimated"
posted_iso              ← <ld+json>.datePosted  // canonical
posted_relative         ← hiringInsightsModel.age  // "30+ days ago"
posted_epoch_ms         ← hostQueryExecutionResult…job.datePublished
job_type                ← jobDescriptionSectionModel.jobDetailsSection.jobTypes[].label
snippet                 ← first ~280 chars of <ld+json>.description (stripped HTML)
qualifications          ← qualificationsSectionModel items (when present)
benefits                ← benefitsModel.benefits.map(b => b.label)
urgent_hiring           ← hiringInsightsModel.urgentlyHiringModel != null
easily_apply            ← indeedApplyButtonContainer.indeedApplyButtonAttributes.jk != null
sponsored               ← _initialData.sponsored
url                     ← "https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=" + jk

Top-level shape: see § Expected Output.

7. Release the session

browse cloud sessions update "$SID" --status REQUEST_RELEASE

Site-Specific Gotchas

• --verified --proxies is mandatory. Any bare-IP or non-verified session gets <title>Security Check - Indeed.com</title> (HTTP 403) within the first turn. Verified by direct browse cloud fetch of /jobs?q=software+engineer&l=Austin,+TX from a datacenter IP — 403 every time (page-bare.html, 59,756 bytes, no window._initialData).
• Even with residential proxies, ~1 in 5 requests on /jobs? returns a 401 "Authenticating…" redirect to /account/login?branding=login-required&from=bot-detection-anonymous&continue=…. Confirmed in iter-1 with 6 sequential identical-URL fetches (attempt 2 of 3 came back with HTTP 401, others 200). The 401 body is a 1,656-byte page that does a HEAD + reads cf-ray then window.location.replaces. Never follow the login redirect — that path leads to a real signin wall. Recovery: retry the same URL up to 3× (Browserbase rotates the residential exit IP); after 3 consecutive 401s, swap session (sessions create again).
• /m/jobs? (mobile search) is harder-blocked than /jobs?. Every fetch attempt on /m/jobs?q=barista&l=30307 in iter-1 came back 403 "Security Check," even through --proxies. Stick to the desktop /jobs? URL family.
• /viewjob?jk=… is the friendliest path. Indeed's robots.txt explicitly Allows /viewjob? and /m/viewjob? for Googlebot, Bingbot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User, and Claude-SearchBot (and Disallows for the wildcard User-agent: *). Empirically the residential-proxy success rate is much higher here than on /jobs?. If you only need single-posting data, always prefer /viewjob?jk= over re-running a SERP query.
• GraphQL is a trap. Disallow: /graphql is in robots.txt, and direct POSTs to https://apis.indeed.com/graphql are firewalled at the gateway. The OneGraph API key (eac18cd3a45d091ee9e8bd4b3b181c30303c641d383cb69f86dfdab1876f9047) is leaked in the page HTML at _initialData.oneGraphApiKey but doesn't authorize anonymous traffic. Don't waste time here — the SSR-embedded _initialData.hostQueryExecutionResult already contains the GraphQL response.
• Publisher API is dead. /ita/v1/publisher returns 404. Indeed deprecated the Publisher API for new accounts in 2023 and shut it off for legacy accounts thereafter. Don't reference it.
• window._initialData is the SSR jackpot. Both /jobs? (SERP) and /viewjob?jk= (detail) ship a JS-assigned window._initialData = {…}; block with all server-rendered state. Parse by scanning balanced braces from the assignment site, decode / → /, JSON.parse. The schema differs between SERP and viewjob — see § Workflow steps 4 and 5.
• window.mosaic.providerData["MosaicProviderRichSearchDaemon"].filterSettingModel is the authoritative source for valid filter enum values (job types, date-posted IDs, radius options). The list of jt IDs Indeed accepts today includes permanent and new_grad in addition to the canonical six — silently dropping them costs the caller half the legitimate result set.
• l=99999 (or any unparseable location) returns parsedL: null + totalJobCount: 0 + noSearchResultModel.headerMsg = "The search <b>… jobs in 99999</b> did not match any jobs." Validate by checking parsedL after extraction — if null and the caller passed a non-empty l, surface this as location_unparseable, not as legitimate zero-result.
• fromage="last" is real but undocumented. The embedded filterSettingModel.ages array includes {id:"last",label:"New jobs"} — "since your last visit." Treat it as a synonym for fromage=1 when no cookie state is in play; pass through verbatim if the caller explicitly asks for "new since last visit."
• radius, start, iafilter, alid, calert, mna, sid, sp=0 are all Disallow'd in robots.txt. They still render correctly through residential-proxy fetch, but Indeed is signalling that these URL patterns are personalized/paginated and should not be indexed. Pass them through; do not strip them from URLs the caller hands you.
• Indeed serves a 581 KB page even for /jobs with no params. A SERP with results is consistently 620 KB to >1 MB. The Browserbase Fetch API caps response bodies at 1 MB — you will get 502 The response body exceeded the maximum allowed size of 1MB. Use a browser session to handle large responses. for most real searches. Drive a full browser session for SERP extraction; Fetch API is only suitable for /viewjob? (which is consistently 600–700 KB) and zero/few-result /jobs? URLs.
• The 0-pad ZIP heuristic doesn't apply. Indeed parses 30307 as ATL just fine, but 99999 is treated as a non-existent ZIP — not "Alaska's largest ZIP range start." Pass ZIPs verbatim and trust parsedL.
• Sponsored cards have _initialData.sponsored: true and a tracking.jobClick.url pointing to /rc/clk?… instead of the canonical viewjob URL. Surface the sponsored flag but always emit the canonical https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=<jk> as url, not the /rc/clk? redirect.
• Read-only stop points (non-negotiable). Do not click button: Apply now, button: Save Job, button: Sign in, the Indeed Apply iframe, or any pagination button — the pagination state is encoded in the start= URL param, navigate by URL. Do not submit the location box (it triggers a typeahead+navigate that can override your filters). Do not click the "Filter" hamburger if the URL already encodes the filter set.
• Five outcome shapes the caller must handle: (a) results page, (b) zero results (totalJobCount: 0 + noSearchResultModel), (c) location unparseable (parsedL: null), (d) anti-bot 403 / 401 (after retries exhausted — emit bot_block), (e) /viewjob?jk= 404 when the jk has expired (Indeed's 404 page is 64 KB of branded chrome — detect via <title>Not Found | Indeed</title>).
• Field-derivation honesty. The mapping in § Workflow step 6 covers the fields that were directly observed in a real viewjob payload during iter-1 (jk=5f3a9664e5d61d1a). Fields the caller asked for that were not present on that posting — qualifications[], employer-vs-Indeed-estimated salary.source, "hiring multiple candidates" flag — are derived from documented Indeed UI components and the schema.org JobPosting shape; surface them when present in the page state, emit null otherwise. Do not fabricate values to fill the schema.

Expected Output

Top-level shape for a multi-result SERP:

{
  "input_url": "https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=software+engineer&l=Austin%2C+TX&fromage=3&jt=fulltime&sort=date",
  "parsed": {
    "q": "software engineer",
    "l": "Austin, TX",
    "radius": null,
    "fromage": "3",
    "jt": "fulltime",
    "explvl": null,
    "sc": null,
    "sort": "date",
    "start": 0
  },
  "applied": {
    "parsedQ": "software engineer",
    "parsedL": "Austin, TX",
    "appliedRadius": 25,
    "appliedCommuteTime": 0
  },
  "total_results": 1842,
  "total_results_formatted": "1,842",
  "page_num": 1,
  "results_per_page": 10,
  "pages_total": 185,
  "sort": "date",
  "jobs": [
    {
      "jk": "5f3a9664e5d61d1a",
      "title": "Software Engineer",
      "company": "Carnegie Robotics",
      "company_rating": 4.4,
      "company_review_count": 43,
      "company_profile_url": "https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Carnegie-Robotics-LLC-1",
      "company_logo_url": "https://d2q79iu7y748jz.cloudfront.net/s/_squarelogo/256x256/f9b6901bf329c74dd0ceb4b9bc4727fe",
      "location": "Pittsburgh, PA 15201",
      "remote": false,
      "hybrid": false,
      "salary": {
        "formatted": null,
        "min": null,
        "max": null,
        "currency": null,
        "period": null,
        "source": null
      },
      "posted_iso": "2026-03-04T19:25:29.479Z",
      "posted_relative": "30+ days ago",
      "posted_epoch_ms": 1772344800000,
      "job_type": "Full-time",
      "snippet": "Carnegie Robotics designs and manufactures advanced robotics systems and components for defense, agricultural, mining, industrial, and off-road autonomy applications…",
      "qualifications": [],
      "benefits": [
        "Food provided",
        "Health insurance",
        "401(k) matching",
        "Paid time off",
        "Vision insurance",
        "Health savings account",
        "Dental insurance",
        "Flexible spending account",
        "Life insurance"
      ],
      "urgent_hiring": false,
      "easily_apply": true,
      "sponsored": false,
      "url": "https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=5f3a9664e5d61d1a",
      "external_apply_url": "https://carnegie-robotics.breezy.hr/p/2d85f5321cc7-software-engineer?source=indeed",
      "feed_source_type": "EMPLOYER",
      "job_latitude": 40.47438,
      "job_longitude": -79.96155
    }
  ]
}

Zero-result branch:

{
  "input_url": "https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=cashier&l=99999",
  "parsed": { "q": "cashier", "l": "99999", "radius": null, "fromage": null, "jt": null, "explvl": null, "sc": null, "sort": null, "start": 0 },
  "applied": { "parsedQ": null, "parsedL": null, "appliedRadius": 0, "appliedCommuteTime": 0 },
  "total_results": 0,
  "outcome": "zero_results",
  "no_result_message": "The search cashier jobs in 99999 did not match any jobs.",
  "jobs": []
}

Location-unparseable branch (caller passed a non-empty l but Indeed couldn't parse it):

{
  "input_url": "https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=cashier&l=99999",
  "outcome": "location_unparseable",
  "applied": { "parsedL": null },
  "no_result_message": "The search cashier jobs in 99999 did not match any jobs.",
  "jobs": []
}

Anti-bot block (after retries exhausted):

{
  "input_url": "https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=software+engineer&l=Austin%2C+TX",
  "outcome": "bot_block",
  "block_type": "security_check_403",
  "block_evidence": "<title>Security Check - Indeed.com</title>",
  "retries_attempted": 5,
  "jobs": []
}

Single-posting branch (caller passed /viewjob?jk=… directly):

{
  "input_url": "https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=5f3a9664e5d61d1a",
  "outcome": "single_posting",
  "jobs": [ /* one fully-hydrated job object, same shape as the SERP result */ ]
}

Expired-posting branch (/viewjob?jk=… returns 404):

{
  "input_url": "https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=deadbeefdeadbeef",
  "outcome": "posting_not_found",
  "block_evidence": "<title>Not Found | Indeed</title>",
  "jobs": []
}