Craiglook.com has been shut down by demand of Craigslist.org

Craigslist makes their money off of Real Estate and Job ads. Charging for the "Adult" section was to placate the Attorney Generals who were threatening legal action.

Wired Magazine said: Wired: Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess Craigslist is not only gigantic in scale and totally resistant to business cooperation, it is also mostly free. The only things that cost money to post on the site are job ads in some cities ($25 to $75), apartment listings by brokers in New York ($10), and—in a special case born of recent legal trouble—advertisements in categories commonly used by prostitutes, because authorities encourage vendors to maintain a record that would aid investigators. There is no banner advertising. They won't let you join them, and at this price you can't beat them either.

Craigslist is not concerned with revenue. As far as Craiglook and others, this is not the first time they have done this and it probably won't be the last.

amiller34 wrote: So, back to the task at hand... How do I now search and make sure I don't miss any opprotunities for 60's or early 70's wagons for sale cheap within 250 miles that I can use as a tow vehicle? Oh and CL if you're listening, I'm completely in favor of a $5 per ad charge for dealers and commercial interests because of the ones that flood the listings with the same overpriced POS with a mile long keyword list posted twice a day. Thanks!

This is the answer.

dj5000000 wrote: or use google and just search "site:craigslist.org whateveryourelookingforhere"

I just tried this and 9 out of 10 of the ads that I clicked on were either expired or all ready deleated.

Rusnak_322 wrote:

dj5000000 wrote: or use google and just search "site:craigslist.org whateveryourelookingforhere"

I just tried this and 9 out of 10 of the ads that I clicked on were either expired or all ready deleated.

I was just repeating advice from this thread but yes, since then I too have tried the google method and either I'm doing something wrong or it isn't very good.

jeffmx5 wrote: Craigslist makes their money off of Real Estate and Job ads. Charging for the "Adult" section was to placate the Attorney Generals who were threatening legal action.

Wired Magazine said: Wired: Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess Craigslist is not only gigantic in scale and totally resistant to business cooperation, it is also mostly free. The only things that cost money to post on the site are job ads in some cities ($25 to $75), apartment listings by brokers in New York ($10), and—in a special case born of recent legal trouble—advertisements in categories commonly used by prostitutes, because authorities encourage vendors to maintain a record that would aid investigators. There is no banner advertising. They won't let you join them, and at this price you can't beat them either.

Craigslist is not concerned with revenue. As far as Craiglook and others, this is not the first time they have done this and it probably won't be the last.

Really enjoyed that article. It was great.

After reading that article..

I am less annoyed. I am somewhat willing to forgive the loss of Craiglook.

Im sure another site will rise to take its place. And if not, i will just try harder.

I hope craigslist doesnt change. That article just made me love CL more than i already do.

dj5000000 wrote:

Rusnak_322 wrote:

dj5000000 wrote: or use google and just search "site:craigslist.org whateveryourelookingforhere"

I just tried this and 9 out of 10 of the ads that I clicked on were either expired or all ready deleated.

I was just repeating advice from this thread but yes, since then I too have tried the google method and either I'm doing something wrong or it isn't very good.

Are you using the "Search Tools" to narrow the time range? Click "Show Search Tools" in the left margin, and select from the time ranges "Last Week", "Last Month" etc... not perfect, but weeds out the stuff posted a year ago that Google still has in its cache.

3Door4G wrote:

jeffmx5 wrote: Craigslist makes their money off of Real Estate and Job ads. Charging for the "Adult" section was to placate the Attorney Generals who were threatening legal action.

Wired Magazine said: Wired: Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess Craigslist is not only gigantic in scale and totally resistant to business cooperation, it is also mostly free. The only things that cost money to post on the site are job ads in some cities ($25 to $75), apartment listings by brokers in New York ($10), and—in a special case born of recent legal trouble—advertisements in categories commonly used by prostitutes, because authorities encourage vendors to maintain a record that would aid investigators. There is no banner advertising. They won't let you join them, and at this price you can't beat them either.

Craigslist is not concerned with revenue. As far as Craiglook and others, this is not the first time they have done this and it probably won't be the last.

Really enjoyed that article. It was great.

Agreed. It is a good article.

He's a strange juxtaposition of extremes. While he is a seemingly bottomless well of free speech advocacy and decentralized control, he only advocates it when it's HIS speech, or HIS control (or lack thereof). Story sure changes when someone else tries to partake of the same well.

Well, im all for people being able to mod cars however they want..

But when people tell me what i should do to my cars, i usually dont listen.

When people photoshop pictures of my car and present them as their own (happened to me a few times), i bitch at them.

I can relate (through analogies, in part) to CL's position a bit more after reading that article.

I find this topic such an ongoing subject of aggravation. Recently I was happily using Jaxed to do my regional searches - now they get the ease-and-desist demand, so no more Craigslist there. It just seems that there's a very conscious effort being made NOT to improve their product, which it's hard not to trace right to the e-bay stake. It seems like a monopolistic practice, and very contrary to the egalitarian ethic of the internet.

My buddy sold a plane to a key member of their staff and this topic came up. He said that they are very deliberately keeping CL the way it is and has been forever....they want to keep it simple and centered around communities.

He cited that this is what the CL users want.

They make almost all of their income off paid advertising in a few key markets.

In other news: Clapp for DROID is my friend. It's free. You can set up multiple searches and regions and get an immediate push notification as soon as the ad is listed. It's almost an unfair advantage.

There is no way you can be fast enough using CL the traditional way. The latest find was a Honda D16 head that had been completely worked over by a reputable shop. Decked, intake and exhaust flanges skimmed. 3-angle valve job, port and polish. Really nice work, 0 miles, $80.

The proliferation of sites trying to offer easier search tools is obvious proof that this is not what the CL users want. Why are cease & desist letters being written if all they care about is user wants? It's obviously not the case.

Don't forget that these sites tend to be targeted at CL power users, not your average user trying to punt out a baby stroller once or twice in their lives. That's the market they're targeting. It's very hard to design a user interface that works well for both groups...

It has it's flaws but the craigslist reader pro from http://craigspal.com/ is the way to go for regional searches. Select your city and enter a search radius in miles and off you go.

pres589 wrote: The proliferation of sites trying to offer easier search tools is obvious proof that this is not what the CL users want. Why are cease & desist letters being written if all they care about is user wants? It's obviously not the case.

Exactly. A nationwide CL is e-bay's worst nightmare. Sure, if you're selling a skateboard, a couch or are looking for a hook-up, local's good and fine, but if you're selling something collectable, that appeals on a national level, staying local doesn't make sense. It's like the internet is the autobahn, and CL wants to keep you in a horse-drawn carriage.

Oddly, Kijiji, which is also owned(?) by Ebay, lets you select which combinations of cities/areas you want to search in from a checklist. In Canada you can do province-wide searches and in Germany you can search the whole country.

Do Ebay have a big stake in CL? Does sound like they're trying to make it irrelevant.

kreb wrote:

pres589 wrote: The proliferation of sites trying to offer easier search tools is obvious proof that this is not what the CL users want. Why are cease & desist letters being written if all they care about is user wants? It's obviously not the case.

Exactly. A nationwide CL is e-bay's worst nightmare. Sure, if you're selling a skateboard, a couch or are looking for a hook-up, local's good and fine, but if you're selling something collectable, that appeals on a national level, staying local doesn't make sense. It's like the internet is the autobahn, and CL wants to keep you in a horse-drawn carriage.

eBay has a minority stake in Craigslist, one that the Craigslist owners including Craig himself did not want them to have. (They bought out an owner and that owner sold without mentioning it to the other owners.) They have no say in day to day operations and are definitely NOT the source of the "local only" search. CL has always been "local only" and Craig himself emphasizes how important it is to the spirit of Craigslist. I'm not sure I agree with him, but I'm not going to pretend that I know better than him at what keeps the list functional.

Keep in mind that while countless other services have popped up, blossomed, and then decayed into useless spam and scam traps, Craigslist has managed to remain useful. So obviously they're doing something right, and this might be part of it.

I'm willing to keep moving on to different CL search engines if that's what it takes to make CL stay useful. Remember the bad old days before CL and just try to stay positive about what we've got.

I want to sell my wares to someone that will drive to my driveway.

I had a guy from Kentucky drive to my driveway to buy some car parts to bring to Carlisle and I live in Wisconsin. This is acceptable to me. Why can't CL people figure that out.

I traveled to a different CL area to buy my miata. I had to, there were none locally available. If I wasn't searching other areas, I would have never found it, and bought it. And I did drive to the kids house to buy his car, he didn't care that I lived 2.5 hours away.

I found my CL search engine from someone on this board. I believe they had a hand in making it. It works way better than Jaxed ever did, and I don't want to say the name incase the CL overlords are watching.

I know what you mean and agree, I have to deal with the same problem. But you and I and everyone on GRM are such a fringe case it's not worth risking everything they've built up to accommodate us. How many people would be willing to drive 2.5 hours to buy a dishwasher? Or look at a used textbook? Or pick up a free bag of packing peanuts? And would opening up the search make people feel less connected to the local site, thus making them less likely to self police for spam/scam/etc? They walk a fine line between being really useful and being overrun by spam/scams/etc. Right now it works pretty well, they don't want to make major changes.

I don't know why they feel compelled to shut down the 3rd party search engines, though.

Other than helping to protect e-bays market share , the main legit reason that I see for the status quo is that all these Cl search engines are using up resources and bandwidth. I don't know if that's a real issue or a non-issue, but it might play in...

Remember also, that it's not just us who are affected by the difficulty making broader searches, it's anyone trying to sell something unique. There's no national market for used washer and dryers, but anyone with a collectable item wants to be on the big stage, beause at any given time there may only be a handful of potential buyers for your specialty item, and the difference between hitting a rejion versus the country is huge.

This is just a reminder that the internet isn't just our ever-improving toy. There are still gatekeepers and overlords whose whims determine how we play.