Jul 13, 2020 06:11:53 AM by John D
I've set up more than one RSS feed for my job searches. They are set to refresh every 15 minutes. I've noticed several problems with the feeds and am wondering others are experiencing the same issues and whether there are any remedies. I recorded my results for a week and here's what I found after receicing 235 job posts.
First, about a third (79) of all jobs don't appear in the feed within 4 hours of being posted. I understand that Upwork may be using caching or that my RSS client might use caching. I've controlled for this possibility and also wrote my own RSS client app that doesn't cache. By the time 4 hours has passed, a client will likely have been flooded with 10-20 proposal and won't look at any beyond that. During my test period, 10 jobs didn't appear within 24 hours of posting, with one taking over 2 days.
Second, I tried setting up different feeds with slightly overlapping criteria. I observed 24 jobs in that appeared in one feed more than 4 hours after they appeared in the other feed. So, feeds seem to be updated or cached at different intervals.
Third, this doesn't seem to be a problem with the regular browser search. I've frequently found jobs posted only minutes before my search, so I think that's working.
From my experience in the last two months, timeliness seems to be a VERY important determinant for whether a client responds to or ignores a proposal. Though I haven't documented my success rate based on my proposal timeliness, I can tell you that all the interviews I've had so far have come from jobs to which I posted a proposal within 2 hours. This seems typical of other jobs I see where I'm "late to the game".
Questions I'd like to explore:
Can anyone identify the caching or TTL times that Upwork puts on its RSS feeds?
Is there any remedy for this issue?
Is anyone having a different experience with RSS feed timeliness than what I've described?
Thanks for your input.
Jul 13, 2020 06:31:52 AM by Goran V
Hi John,
I`m sorry about the inconvenience this is caused you. At the moment I`m not aware of any problems with the RSS feed. However, our team will reach out to you via ticket as soon as possible and will investigate this further.
Thank you.
Jul 15, 2021 12:29:24 AM by Gregory M
Hi John,
Did you ever find out what was causing of this issue? I just received a listing from my RSS that is 30 days old! Not sure if this is an Upwork thing, or something related to my RSS service. Thank you..
GregM
Jul 15, 2021 01:01:27 AM by Goran V
Hi Gregory,
One of our team members will reach out to you via ticket as soon as possible and will assist you further with your RSS feed. Thank you.
Jul 15, 2021 08:21:36 AM by John D
Hi Greg,
For about a month after I opened this ticket, I monitored timing differences between a manual search and RSS feeds, stale jobs appearing (as you described), and different feeds with overlapping criteria updating at different times. I gave up using the feeds because they didn't provide timely or accurate results.
There's probably nothing wrong with your RSS reader software or how you've configured it. Unless IMO, unless Upwork can convincingly fix this, it's not worth the trouble. I'd like to hear back from you as to whether they're able to resolve this to your satfsfaction and how theu did it. Let me know and GoodLuck!
John
Jul 15, 2021 09:03:24 AM Edited Jul 15, 2021 05:16:33 PM by Gregory M
Hi John,
I opened a ticket this morning. Just received another posting that is 16 days old. I went to the WC3 RSS validation page out of curiosity, and about 10 of 20 feeds would not validate giving me a 404, which is strange because I was able to test the file in my browser, and the file is there. I really wish it was the reader, but I have a feeling this is an Upwork problem. Anyway, I have a ticket open to first address the feeds not validating, as I think this is somehow related, or at least it I the one thing I can prove is not working properly. I will keep you posted, and thank you for your research. This needs to be fixed whatever it is, but from my reading, this has been going on for a while, but receiving a 16-day post in my RSS feed today is not acceptable. We shall see. Stay tuned.
Greg
Jul 15, 2021 05:15:49 PM by Gregory M
Still waiting to hear back from the "technical team", but I am reading posts from six years ago from freelancers having the EXACT same issue (but six years ago). Steaming angry right now. I'll keep you posted..