Searching Craigslist with Google Advanced Search

[GG54172]

There are a lot of good deals to be found on Craigslist. However, it is craigslist's policy to only deal local. So even if you live inbetween three craigslist cities (like I do) you have to search each city's website idependantly. It's actually craigslist policy to prevent people from buying or selling over distance.

 

The problem is, when you know what you want, you don't mind driving a few hours or waiting a few weeks to get the item in the mail. So I think I found a way to search for stuff, using google, on craiglist. This should work for any decent search engine, I just like google.

 

First of all, if you click on the "Advanced Search" button Google will enter all of these details for you.

 

First off, enter the terms you want to search for:

 

yamaha venture

 

Google will search for and return a result for any website that has either yamaha or venture somewhere in the page. This will return first gens, second gens, vans, snowmobiles, etc.

 

So let's say you are only interested in the Second Gens. You can limit the search more by adding a phrase, surrounded by quotation marks.

 

Enter the term:

 

"Royal Star Venture"

 

Now google will search for any website that has yamaha, venture, or royal star venture. However, those sites that have all three will be prioritized to the top.

 

If you are not interested in a chevy van, or a yamaha snowmobile (both of which are also called venture) you can delete search terms with the negative sign:

 

–chevy –chevrolet –ski –snow –rs –snowmobile

 

No google will exclude any site that mentions one of the negative signs.

 

Finally, you can search within a specific domain by adding the term site:

 

site:craigslist.org

 

 

The final search term should look like this:

 

yamaha venture "royal star venture" -chevy -chevrolet -ski -snow -rs -snowmobile site:craigslist.org

 

 

Again, google will enter all of this information for you if you click the "advanced search" button.

 

Now, google does have a couple of limitations:

 

1. If someone list an item on craiglist, google will not find it for several hours to several days.

 

2. The search results can be outdated.

 

3. You still may miss some items that aren't listed correctly, and get a hit on some other items you don't want that are listed incorrectly.

 

Either way, , and happy hunting!

[slick97spirit]

Dang, that works pretty well

[davepa]

http://www.craigshelper.com/ slid the red ball to extend the search area allows you to search ebay and craigslist at the same time..

 

Dave

[GG54172]

http://www.craigshelper.com/ slid the red ball to extend the search area allows you to search ebay and craigslist at the same time..

 

Dave

 

 

EXCELLENT! Thanks!

[GG54172]

http://www.craigshelper.com/ slid the red ball to extend the search area allows you to search ebay and craigslist at the same time..

 

Dave

 

 

It seems that craigshelper has changed their name: http://www.searchtempest.com/