RSS Feeds
More Useful Craigslist Searches with Yahoo Pipes
Posted by Adam Pash at 6:00 AM on November 2, 2007
Craigslist is an excellent tool for finding great deals, but if you're trying to put together streamlined Craigslist searches and feeds to stay abreast of a specific set of results, it can be difficult to build queries beyond very basic, inflexible keyword searches. For example, Craigslist search does not support wildcards, nor does it support AND, OR, or NOT searches. To make more useful Craigslist searches, the Witigonen weblog uses a combination of Yahoo Pipes with Craigslist to add all of the missing advanced search capabilities to Craigslist—and remove frequently occurring items. Whether you're using Craigslist to keep track of job postings or hunt for a great new couch in your area, a precision search can make the difference between finding what you want and getting buried by what you don't.
Tags: craigslist | search | search techniques | shopping | yahoo pipes
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
LastVigilante
Posted 6:33 PM 1/11/07
Thats a rather lengthy explanation he provides. Isn't there a way he could provide a pre-made pipe? I've never used it and that article simply makes me nervous.
LastVigilante
atomicrabbit
Posted 7:17 PM 1/11/07
i agree with lastvigilante.
atomicrabbit
daniel.j.doughty
Posted 9:25 PM 1/11/07
I haven't tried this example and I'm not certain how Yahoo pipes work, but it's probably a glorified RSS scrape, or even perhaps a more active scrape, nevertheless if you're looking for a great deal I find that the manual search on the actual craiglist site is the best way.
Now if you're really busy or looking for something so particular that you're the only person who will want to buy it, this method may work.
Basically I'm just trying to warn the cheapskates looking for mainstream items.
daniel.j.doughty
jakeu1701
Posted 11:42 AM 2/11/07
you can use similar search operators to what google uses.
If you are are looking for an iPod classic and not a dock, you can search for
ipod classic -dock.
I use this all the time to clear out the junk. There are other operators one can use, but you will have to try them out.
J
jakeu1701
LastVigilante
Posted 6:33 PM 2/11/07
@jamesmusik: Gracias senior! (Squiggly thing over the N.)
LastVigilante
jamesmusik
Posted 7:04 PM 1/11/07
@LastVigilante: Fair enough. I added a link at the bottom to the complete pipe I use.
jamesmusik