OT: Searching CL Nationwide

[CDollarsign]

Searchtempest used to be my CL scanner across the great nation we live in. It looks like google greatly diminished their capability.

What are you guys using to search CL across the US of A?

[rockdude]

I use Google Craigslist search

https://cse.google.com/cse/home?cx=018394770372758774523:kqdhmppenta&hl=en

[Gsinill]

Been using http://www.dailylister.com for a while.

Didn't know about the Google one; looks good too and unlike dailylister it doesn't open a new browser tab once you click a hit.

[jruhlen1980]

I liked searchtempest too because you could narrow it down by category or city or whatever, it's still usable but not as great now. My understanding is that CL changed something, not google.

Related, I used to use the Mokriya Craigslist app which was similarly fantastic. It is no longer available, and after a lot of digging around I found out that CL did not renew its licensing agreement with Mokriya so the app has been pulled. None of the other apps come close.

I don't understand why CL seems intent on making it hard to search their site.

[icepick_trotsky]

Bummer about searchtempest. It was such a great tool.

[alancw3]

i have found this website to be the best for criagslist nationwide:

http://claz.org

[Aaron O]

I believe what happened (and this includes quasi-informed conjecture) is that after ebay acquired a significant stake in CL, CL started pursuing policies with search engines like SearchTempest that would limit its use as a national service/competitor of ebay.

[jruhlen1980]

I believe what happened (and this includes quasi-informed conjecture) is that after ebay acquired a significant stake in CL, CL started pursuing policies with search engines like SearchTempest that would limit its use as a national service/competitor of ebay.

Ah that makes as much sense as anything. Thanks.

Everything good on the internet eventually gets ruined.

[staggerwing]

Just go to Google advanced search:

https://www.google.com/advanced_search

Then, use "craigslist.org" as the site. If you omit the the leading text string, which is the city (ex. cincinnati.craigslist.org), it will search all craigslist domains.

[nighthawk]

Just go to Google advanced search:

https://www.google.com/advanced_search

Then, use "craigslist.org" as the site. If you omit the the leading text string, which is the city (ex. cincinnati.craigslist.org), it will search all craigslist domains.

Pretty much how I search it. Put "site:craigslist.org" in the regular google search field, along with the keyword you are searching... and it will show returns from all craigslist sites. I then usually go into "tools"... click "Anytime".. and change the setting to only return the past weeks listings.. since many older than that are no longer valid. Could also search past month, or year, etc.

[jruhlen1980]

That's fine for a keyword search but I like to just browse the bike listings. Have to do that manually now.

[weisan]

Just want to say "thank you" to all Craigslist power users here at this forum, thanks for bringing all the awesome PSAs to my attention in the past. :D

[Tempest Nathan]

Hi, founder of SearchTempest.com here. This came up in my Google alerts, so I wanted to stop by and answer questions!

First off, Google did make a change to their 'Custom Search' policies a few months back that required changes to our site. Basically we're no longer able to show results for each city separately, all on the same page, sourced from Google. We still can show results for multiple cities together on the page, and we added Bing as a secondary source to make them as complete as possible. That said, we've found that both Google and Bing tend to miss a significant number of posts now. (For some reason, Google missed fewer when we searched each city separately.)

However, at about the same time, we also released an entirely new way to view results, which I think is actually better than what we had before. Our new "Direct Results" view is now the default. Basically it generates a list of links to craigslist results pages, each one covering a group of around 20 cities. We build these groups automatically to cover the entire area you want to search, whether it's 400 miles around your zip code, the entire country, or whatever. (When you search craigslist directly, you're limited to searching around a 200 mile radius, so we basically tile these 200-mile areas together to cover the whole country, then work out which chunks of which tiles we need to use to give you the results you're looking for.)

Anyway, long story short, because the Direct Results link you straight to CL pages, they don't have the problems of missing or outdated results that our older Google-based results did. (Same applies to other search sites powered by Google, which is all of them as far as I know.)

Finally, if you prefer to view each state or even each city separately, instead of grouped together as I described, you can change the grouping of the links. There's also an option below the results links to 'Open results in popup windows', which will give you a little index window alongside the results to quickly flip through city by city, if that's your preference.

I'll subscribe to this thread in case anyone has questions, or feel free to reach out anytime via our contact page: http://www.searchtempest.com/contact

[Louis]

Wow - Big Brother really is watching.

Welcome, Nathan - do you ride a bike at all? ;)

[Tempest Nathan]

Wow - Big Brother really is watching.

Welcome, Nathan - do you ride a bike at all? ;)

Ha, anybody can make a Google alert! Fortunately for me, "SearchTempest" is a pretty unambiguous keyword.

And yeah, I have a Cannondale cyclocross bike that I bought around six years ago. Went for my first long (for me) ride in a while yesterday actually. These days I'm mostly working on encouraging my kid to practice toward getting her training wheels off though. :)

[jruhlen1980]

Ha, anybody can make a Google alert! Fortunately for me, "SearchTempest" is a pretty unambiguous keyword.

And yeah, I have a Cannondale cyclocross bike that I bought around six years ago. Went for my first long (for me) ride in a while yesterday actually. These days I'm mostly working on encouraging my kid to practice toward getting her training wheels off though. :)

I bet you could find a balance bike on CL pretty cheap :)

I plan to get one for my niece one of these days. Her dad is more interested in ATVs and snowmobiles and things with motors so I feel like it's up to me to oversee her bike education.

[Tempest Nathan]

I bet you could find a balance bike on CL pretty cheap :)

I plan to get one for my niece one of these days. Her dad is more interested in ATVs and snowmobiles and things with motors so I feel like it's up to me to oversee her bike education.

Yeah, balance bikes are cool. She actually had one for a long time, but it was always a massive struggle to get her to ride it. Never actually got up to "balancing". The training wheels seem to work better for her since she can get some speed up and practice balancing a bit with them set relatively high. Just going to be a struggle to convince her to give up the crutch. Probably the final push will be when her little brother's ready to pass her... :)