Craigslist regional or national searches

[IslandTractor]

And it is a fine theory, except some people live on a border, border, border and straddle two equally close areas. This means people have to search twice (or more) for every item instead of simply checking two (or more) region checkboxes and avoiding the annoyance or jumping around.

As a practical example, my area is "Western Kentucky".. which covers a LOT of ground, where "Clarksville, TN" items are sometimes just 15 minutes down the road (across the TN border). How does limiting my search to all of West KY and not including 15 min down the road make anything "local"? Good theory, but you're wrong.
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I agree. Don't shoot the messenger.

Craigslist clearly could have a more sophisticated algorithm based on user identified zipcode etc. My point was just that they are philosophically focussed on local so they don't cooperate with any programmer who tries to work around their intentionally clunky interface.

 

[California]

It may be more than philosophy. $$$$$$$$$$

Ebay bought a large interest in CL. I can't help but suspect that Ebay wants anything that isn't local to go on their (paid) listings.

Also Ebay bought Kiji (sp?). Does anyone know how it works? Could Ebay intend to have paid local listings on Kiji replace Craigslist? That looks like a step toward control over the whole nationwide private-party ad system. Not just tractors, but everything online.

 

[IslandTractor]

It may be more than philosophy. $$$$$$$$$$

Ebay bought a large interest in CL. I can't help but suspect that Ebay wants anything that isn't local to go on their (paid) listings.

Also Ebay bought Kiji (sp?). Does anyone know how it works? Could Ebay intend to have paid local listings on Kiji replace Craigslist? That looks like a step toward control over the whole nationwide private-party ad system. Not just tractors, but everything online.

Ebay tried to buy all of Craigslist but couldn't so they started Kiji (which is pretty much a flop). There have been lots of legal battles between eBay and CL and I believe they have now separated completely.

Easiest way to understand it is that CL is kind of a hippy leftover and marches to the tune of a different drummer. They are just not interested in totally maximizing profits etc.

 

[derek01]

Thanks I have been wondering how to expand the craigs list search.

 

[jcummins]

I use this 'site:craigslist.org forwhateveritem' in google ... when I want to do national level price checking.

 

[IslandTractor]

I use this 'site:craigslist.org forwhateveritem' in google ... when I want to do national level price checking.

That does work pretty well. Do you know how to regionalize the sites? SearchTempest can do the same thing but is able to limit the search to sites within a geographic radius.

Still, your simple method is a lot cleaner than SearchTempest.


(Note: for those of you who haven't explored search terms on CL, there are a few help pages buried in the FAQ in the Help section. craigslist | about > help > search

I find it very useful to limit searches at the command line with things like the negative sign. So for example to search Kubota tractors but exclude the BX series you would search for Kubota -BX. Or, if you only want low hour tractors you can search Kubota "low hours" to get a specific phrase included. Pretty useful little tricks like that are available.

 

[California]

Googling on 'site:craigslist.org' works well for statistical data, when you want to learn typical prices or popularity of a model etc for general information.

But for buying something at a good price, waiting until Google indexes the listings perhaps a day later means the best buys were already sold. SearchTempest is a clumsy interface to the data, but the data it returns is up-to-the-minute.

My experience buying my first Yanmar and also my backhoe was that the seller continually received calls as he negotiated with me. Each seller told more than one caller 'it might be sold, I'll talk to you in a half hour'. Local CL readers called immediately, while anyone using Google or some Google-based interface would be a day late and miss out.

Something like SearchTempest that merged the data from your chosen regions would be ideal. Jaxed Mash did this well, but they were forced to stop. I don't know of anything that replaced them.

 

[Roonabeck]

When you do a craigslist search on any of their sites, it gives you an "RSS" link at the bottom of the search results page. I set up the searches on the various local craigslists and add them as "subscriptions" to google reader (associated with a gmail account). Then you can group the subscriptions, so the search results from multiple CL sites get aggregated into one list.

 

[jcummins]

When you do a craigslist search on any of their sites, it gives you an "RSS" link at the bottom of the search results page. I set up the searches on the various local craigslists and add them as "subscriptions" to google reader (associated with a gmail account). Then you can group the subscriptions, so the search results from multiple CL sites get aggregated into one list.

Good idea