I want a better search at Craigslist.com

I often use craigslist.com and it is a very useful service. It let’s me accomplish what I need, no ads and no usage charges.

The problem is its search feature. Ideally when I search to rent a place I want to narrow down the search results not only by $$-range and number of bedrooms, but most importantly “the location“. And the latter need of mine is not being satisfied.

For example if I’m looking for a place in Downtown area, I can’t just search for “downtown”, because some posters didn’t specify the location as “downtown” or they did, but misspelled it.

Because I don’t want to miss potential deals, I end up not trying to narrow the search results by location, and instead wade through lists of irrelevant posts, sometimes missing critical posts because of that.

This problem is non-specific to apartment search, but applies to all other otherwise great features of craigslist.com.

Here is how I see this problem can be fixed:

When users submit a post, in addition or instead of the free form “Location” input field add a pull-down list of suggested neighborhoods. and then allow others to narrow the search down based on one or more selections in the neighborhood list.

Once this post gains enough votes I’ll forward this entry to the craigslist management, if they won’t beat me to it.

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3 Responses to “I want a better search at Craigslist.com”

1. Peter on December 24th, 2007 2:43 pm

   I totally agree with you, that would be nice segmenting. That way it would be even more neighborhood (”local search tool”) popular.

   I do use very cool tool for craigslist search on autopilot.

2. florian on June 20th, 2008 11:35 pm

   Have you ever used http://www.CraigsPal.com?

   CraigsList have totally new meaning with this Craigslist search tool.

3. jason on September 4th, 2008 8:01 pm

   Try CraigSpy - it lets you search multiple keywords, multiple locations, multiple categories, and it also searches for you while you’re away from the computer. http://www.craig-spy.com is the site

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