Your Craigslist Classifieds Authority Site

Rules for Doing a Successful Search

Choose the correct category: Again, make sure you are in the right category when doing your Craigslist search. You don't have to choose a category if you think the item you are looking for is rare enough. But for the most part, not picking a category may give you search results for disrelated items to what you are looking for.

Don't be overly specific in your search: If you want to get good search results, don't be overly specific in what you type in the search bar. If you type too many keywords you will most likely NOT find what you are looking for. This is because the seller would have had to include all those keywords in his title and description for it to come up in your search results and not all sellers describe the items perfectly in their postings. For example:

Let' say you are searching for a Hitachi 55HDS52 UltraVision 55-inch Plasma TV. If you a search for “Hitachi 55HDS52 UltraVision 55-inch Plasma TV”, you may get no search results. This doesn't mean that there are no postings on Craigslist for this model TV, it just means that the seller may have called it simply a “Hitachi 55 inch Plasma TV” or just a”Hitachi Plasma TV”. So your overly specific search for “Hitachi 55HDS52 UltraVision 55-inch Plasma TV” may have caused you to miss out on that posting.

Here's how I would do a search for a Hitachi 55HDS52 UltraVision 55-inch Plasma TV:

1.Go to the “Electronics” category in the for sale section.
2.Type “Hitachi 55 plasma” into the search bar and press enter.

Notice it is not very specific. I also didn't use the word “TV” in he search. By only typing “Hitachi 55 plasma” it shows you are looking for a 55 inch plasma TV by Hitachi, but allows for the seller to:
1.either call it a TV or television in his posting
2.either use the word “inch”,”in”, or the symbol for inch in his posting.
3.either include the word “UltraVision” or not in the posting

This way I get the most search results and because the keywords are not overly specific, I get valid search results.

I hope you're getting the idea about this. The idea is you don't want to miss any postings for the item you are looking for.

Don't be overly vague: If you are too vague you will get too many search results and you will have to weed through them to find what you want.

Say for example you have in mind the product you are looking for, a specific type of car:
A used Black Toyota Tacoma truck, with Anti-Lock Brakes, 6 Cylinder engine, and 4 wheel drive built within with the years of 1997 and 2001. That's a very specific truck you have in mind!

If you log onto Craigslist, don't choose a category, and simply type “truck” into the Craiglist search you will get a rediculous amount of desrelated results. This is a pretty extreme example but I 'm just making a point. Even if you did choose the “cars & trucks” category, and typed only the word “toyota” in the search, you'd still get too many results!. Probably even “toyota truck” would get too many results. These are examples of being too vague in your searches. You'd spend hours digging through disrelated results and get frustrated or possibly never even find what you are looking for.

The Correct Way to Search

If you have a specific item in mind the best way to search on Craigslist for your item is:

Start off specific, and move towards vague

If you have in mind exactly what you are looking for then start off your search by trying to nail it on the first try by doing a specific search (not overly specific!). Meaning, do a search for specifically what you are looking for. If you can't find it, slowly get more and more vague until the search results start to become disrelated to what you are looking for. Don't just try one search and give up. I find many items I'm looking for by maybe doing 5-10 different searches before I find the item. This is because the wide variety of sellers have a wide variety of posting methods and you have to embrace all of them to really be successful in finding what you want on Craigslist.

Here's what I mean: Let's say you are bent on finding a Volkswagon Jetta GLS 1.8 Turbo car with sunroof, front wheel drive, and passenger-side airbag built between 1999 and 2003. Start your search off specific too see if you can nail it. First I'd go to the “cars & trucks” section and do a search for:

You can see it in the picture, but I also put the words “airbag” and “front wheel drive” in the search bar, hoping to get a result for exactly what I'm looking for. A search like this may turn up zero results, but that does not mean the car does not exist on Craigslist. It just means the sellers may not have included the details in their title or description the way you typed them into your search.

So if no results, lets get more vague. Try only this:

Notice how we took off “sunroof”, “airbag”, and “front wheel drive”. See if the results are better this time. If still no or few results you can get even more vague:

And finally:

At this point if you didn't see the car you were looking for, it probably doesn't exist on Craigslist. At least not in your city. Now might be the time to check nearby cities, following the same procedure.

Here's another example:

Say I'm looking for a Dell Latitude D600 Laptop. First I will go into the “computer” section of the Craigslist “For Sale” section. I start off by typing: “Dell Latitude D600” in the search bar and clicking Enter. If nothing, I will try “Dell D600” only into the search. If that doesn't show any promise I might then try “Dell Latitude”. Some people spell Latitude wrong so I'll probably try “Dell Lattitude”. If still no good results then I may try finally either “Dell” or “Dell Laptop”. Both of these will return a ton of results so I'll have to sift through them and I may or may not find what I'm looking for.

Common model numbers: Now say I type in “D600” into the search bar, again looking for a Dell Latitude D600 computer, and the search results yield a big list of computers from Dell, but also results for Compaq, Gateway, HP and Sony. I'll then know that D600 is a popular computer model number for different companies, which is not good for me because I'm looking for a Dell! At this point, I would qualify my search by typing “Dell D600” into the search bar and searching that way.

The above will happen with common model numbers and which will force you make your search more specific. Sometimes it happens.

Searching for a particular brand of something: To search for a particular brand of something, as long as you are in the right category just type the manufacturer into the search. For example: If you in the “photo+video” category, and want to find a Canon camera, just type the word Canon into the search and see what comes up. If it is filled with accessories and camcorders, you can qualify the search with the word “camera” so your search would be “Canon camera”. But don't qualify the search until you see what the results are with just the manufacture first. This is because the seller may forget to put the word camera into the posting.

Items with multiple names: Some items have more than one name, like a “camcorder”. Some people call then “video cameras”, so if you do a search for “Canon camcorder”, you may miss out on all the postings where the seller calls it a “video camera”. So try “Canon video camera” and your search may be more fruitful.

Another example: You are looking for a Panasonic Television. Go into the “electronics” category and type the word “Panasonic” only in the search. If you are flooded again with accessories and unrelated Panasonic products, only then qualify the search. This is because some people call televisions “TVs” or “monitors”. So if you did a search for “Panasonic televisions” you would miss all the postings where the seller calls them “TVs”.

Also try misspellings of the manufacturer in your searches if the company name is difficult to spell. Some seller may be spelling Panasonic “Panesonic” or something like that.

Just doing a General Search

If you are just doing a general search to see what's new on Craigslist, you can choose the category you want and just go down the list starting from the top. Because Craigslist is laid out in chronological order, know that you usually have a better chance to acquire the items most towards the top because they are the ones that have been on the market for the shortest amount of time.

Also, if an item does not sell, you have a good chance to get it once it leaves the first page because it will have less viewers.

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