Fish4jobs revealed a raft of developments when it met with advertisers to dispel rumours that it is in trouble after its shareholder Northcliffe Media pulled out.

Chief executive, Joe Slavin, told the London meeting earlier this month: "We keep hearing rumours that we are in trouble but we aren't. In June we were head-to-head with Monster for brand awareness and we outgrew the market."

Fish4jobs announced that it has upgraded its CV database to have realtime updates for users, to categorise CVs by sector and to have filters to allow users to search by job type, sector, working hours and salary.

It has also completed work on job title searches. For example, commercial vehicle drivers can hold a C or a C+E licence, commonly known as class 1 or class 2 licences. Fish4jobs' search engine knows this and will list all relevant positions.

Richard Yeo, chief technology officer, said: "We did an analysis of what people type when searching for a job and have changed our search technology to fit in with this so people do not miss out on jobs."

The updated search technology will strip out commas, slashes and noise words such as 'the', it understands plurals and therefore reduces the number of bad matches.

The company has taken inspiration from Amazon by introducing 'People who applied for this job also applied for this' and also 'Be first to apply for this job', therefore doing everything possible to ensure that every job advertised on the site receives applications.

Fish4jobs also revealed plans to launch a mobile website, which will allow users to apply for jobs on their mobile telephones. It also plans to introduce 'job title suggest', which will suggest and match job titles as the jobseeker types, and to introduce RSS feeds.

It is also considering adding a facility which allows jobseekers to search for jobs by nearest underground and rail station.

Job board executives told advertisers that the company plans to increase the numbers of people registering on the site by hiring more sales people — the headcount has risen from 17 in September last year to the current 125. It is targeting small businesses and currently has 65 people in its call centre making 100,000 calls a month.

Fish4jobs is also using regional press and radio to target users. Its advertisements take the form of jobseeking tips. "They are friendly and let the jobseeker know we are here for them," said Slavin.