Unlike eBay or any other similar website, Craigslist is supposed to help find things for sale in your local area. However, you will not always be able to find your desired item in your locale and will be forced to check for it outside of your area.
As Craigslist is not meant to help you find things on a country-wide or worldwide basis, it can be a bit difficult to search the whole site in a single search. But, it is not impossible. With some tweaks and tools you can easily search all Craigslist with customizable options.
In this tutorial, we are going to show you both manual and automatic ways to search all craigslist, you can use any method that works best for you.
Use Google Advanced Search (Manual)
You can use the Google Advanced search to limit the search to a single domain and find anything in it with proper filters.
To access Google advanced search, click on Settings located at the bottom right corner of the “Google Search” home page. From there, click on “Advanced Search”. You can also just type “Google advanced search” in the Google search bar to access it.
You will see a page with lots of options to customize a search. In there, enter the name of the item which you would like to search in the field that says “all these words”. In our case, it is “Speakers”.
Now, type “directory” in the field that says “none of these words. This will remove all searches with directories that just contain numbers and names, making it easy to search valid listings.
After that, scroll down and look for the field that says “site or domain” and type “craigslist.org” in there without “www”.
You can also filter by time from the option that says “last update”. Just click on the drop down menu to choose the time from which you would like to see results.
There are also other options, such as “region” “terms appearing” and “file type” to further narrow down the search.
When you are done customizing, click on “Advanced Search” and you will see results in “Google Search”.
Use a Dedicated Tool (Automatic)
There are also many services that will let you search craigslist with a single search. Many of them come with customizable options to narrow down the search and make it easier to get what you really want.
Some of these services include, Daily lister, Search Tempest, ad hunt’r and Search Craigslist. These services will let you search for your query with one click and will let you use custom options to make it easy to search anything.
For the sake of the tutorial, we are going to use the tool ad hunt’r.
Access the website and enter the name of the item which you would like to search. Now, click on the downward arrow located before the “Search” button to select the area where you would like to search. You can keep it to “All of Craigslist” if you want to search all Craigslist and click on “Search” to find the item.
You will see all the results on the right side and a panel on the left that will let you narrow down the search.
You can use the Advanced Search panel on the left to provide the price limit, Time, exclude unwanted words and add exact word. Once you are done customizing, click on “Advanced Search” to see the results.
You can also use the option “Filter by Category” to add a category in which your specific item belongs. This will make it very easy to get rid of all the unrelated results.
If you have any questions or would like add more information, let us know in the comments below.
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