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Searching multiple cities on Craigslist
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Craigslist, while currently taking some heat over the question of prostitution, is otherwise an incredible site for locating advice, products and services. Craigslist is based on the concept of community and only allows for visitors to search one Craigslist site at a time.
If you are looking for a service like somebody to mow your lawn or paint your house - obviously local rules. However, if you are looking for a collectible item or a hard to find item you might be willing to pay for shipping or even drive a bit to pick it up. Using Craigslist.org your only choice is to search Washington DC and then go to Baltimore and then go to Richmond and so on and so on.
Creative folks have tried numerous ways to search Craigslist from a global perspective and in most cases these attempts have resulted in the smack down from Craigslist. The typical cease and desist email from Craigslist notes "Your search tool just appeared on our radar and while we appreciate your desire to extend our search functionality it goes against the basic intent of Craigslist to be a local tool."
However, two new tools appear to be surviving and escaping any Craigslist turn off. The tools take very different approaches - Crazedlist runs multiple Craigslist queries and Search All Craig's uses Google to search Craigslist.
Crazedlist replicates the Craigslist experience. The site is really easy to understand. You simply check off every Craigslist city/state/country that you want to search, and enter in whatever criteria you’re looking for - the same category, price, pics, title search criteria you can use on Craigslist. Note that before you can use the site for the first time you will need to make a one time adjustment to the way your browser runs. Crazedlist provides detailed instructions on the change which is a way to keep Craigslist from recognizing that all these multiple city searches are coming from the same PC.
Search All Craig's combines Google Custom Search with Craigslist’s information database. It's a bit faster than and does not require the browser customization of Crazedlist. However, you can't limit you search to specific cities and you can't easily limit the search to specific price ranges.
So far these services have lasted longer than other services that have attempted to overcome the local search limitation. Only time will tell if Craigslist lets them stay alive - but so long as they work, they give you a great way to get maximum value from Craigslist.
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