Easy way to search craiglist pages with your own keywords - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

alex_nl · #1 07-03-2007, 10:39 AM

I posted a message in the craiglist waring thread on how to search craiglist pages easily. Now I've made a tutorial for that, so you guys also can use this easy way or searching!

Using RSS feeds in combination with crazedlist.org and Google reader

1.Go to www.crazedlist.org
Here you can select which craiglist you want to use, which place you like. You select the box in front of that place. In this tutorial, I want to search them all, so I select All in the dropdown box

After this, you can enter your keywords in the field: “search for”

In this tutorial, we want to search for an 1981 300SD. So we enter that keywords. It might be handy to use multiple RSS feeds with slightly different keywords so you will filter them all: like you can use “1981 300SD”, but some people use in there advertise “81 300SD”, so it might be handy to use that too as keyword.

Now select the category; “Sales/Wanted” Then another dropdown box shows up and we choose “cars&trucks”

After this you can also add a minimum and a maximum price and select if you only want advertises with or without pictures. Also you can select the box “only titles”, with this it will only search with your keywords in the titles, not in the advertise itself.
After this, you click on the orange button with RSS Feed on, now it will load the RSS feed with your preferences.
Now you need to save the RSS feed, by clicking on the link that says “this link”, and save this where you can find it later.

Now we got the RSS feed configured, and we can load it in Google reader.
Next you go to www.google.com/reader
You need to sign in with you google account, if you don’t have one you need to register yourself.
Once you signed in, you get to the front page of google reader, and you need to click on settings in your right top corner of the screen

There you select import/export

And then you can select the RSS file, also known as OPML file, that you just saved on your computer when you created it on crazedlist.
You upload it.
When it’s finished uploading, it will show you all the subscriptions you’ve made with the RSS feed. So from every craigslist you added on crazedlist to your search string it will make an subscription in google reader.
Then you select Back to Google Reader, and you are ready.

Now when you click on All Items, it will show you the items that are found on the craigslist with your keywords.

I personally use the older version of google reader, it works more easyer then the newer version in my opinion. But you can check that out by yourself, and select the version that works the best for you. You can change to your older version by clicking on Settings, and then go to the tab Preferences

Here you can click the button to Revert to previous version
I personally use iGoogle as starting page, and I’ve got the google reader on my starting page when I open my browser. It automatically refreshes the feeds, so whenever I open my start page, the new items are displayed there.

/end

I hope it's understandable for you guys, since English is not my native language. Enjoy!