Hey all - we built this because we really like buying off craigslist vs dealerships. Its still pretty new but we'd love to know how we could make it better, so any and all comments are much appreciated. Thanks!
Please change the location selector to allow Canadian locations and searching on the Canadian craigslist sites. Other than that shortcoming, pretty great as far as I'm concerned.
This looks fantastic! Reminds me of padmapper, for cars.
I'm really liking some of the things you've done to parse out information into a more digestible/searchable format. The dynamic filters, mousing-over-to-see-different-images, and allowing me to 'favorite' listings makes this a godsend compared to manual craigslist-surfing. Have you considered searching by color? I know this won't be easy to parse out but perhaps image recognition would be more reliable?
Ya, adding color search is definitely on our roadmap. It'll be pretty easy for dealership cars, since they usually list it, and for Craigslist hopefully some blob detection will work.
For "car guys" you need to allow searching by the platform code. Way more important and specific than the decade-spanning model names. For example "e30" should return '83-91 BMW 3 Series.
Love that you can specify Slushbox/Manual and exclude salvage titles.
Very annoying that middle-clicking car posting titles on the 'grid view' page does not open the cars in new tabs. I want to scan through the list and open all the ones I find interesting, then look through the details one at a time.
Clicking the site's logo (top left) should bring you back to the no-current-search homepage. Not edit the current search. Right now it feels as if you can't entirely clear the search. Clicking back to the homepage should definitely do that.
I use this site for a list of desirable year/model cars. You might get a few ideas from them: http://autoemu.com/
shoot - yeah, we were sort of undecided on how to do this. Would you prefer a full tab in the browser or a tab within the webpage to see the car details? Obviously our current bootstrap modal isn't capable of this, but once we've added some pricing statistics we're going to shift to probably one of the above formats. Thanks for the feedback!
Definitely a full/real browser tab. That's what middle-clicking does, it opens a new browser tab. Unless the site does something nonstandard. [Sidenote: Chrome extension to always enforce standard middle-clicking?]
P.S. I updated my original post with a few more suggestions.
Sounds pretty insane and hard to maintain to me. I would leave it to the buyer to know what year of car he's interested and set the date range appropriately. I feel it's too much to ask sites like this to do this behind the scenes.
This has some similarity to Autoglance (which is more Hipmunk-like in its UI, currently does not include craigslist data, but does allow searching by color) posted here a few days ago:
Nice job. Suggestion: specify what format you expect for the "Near" field. It took me a few tries to realize it wanted a ZIP code (and all the while it was telling me to "match the requested format").
Also, did you get permission from craigslist to index their listings? I was looking into building something like this, but their terms said something along the lines of "don't access our site with a crawler unless we give you permission".
Thanks! I think we'll try to link directly to google geocoding later, but for now I'll definitely add zipcode placeholder text.
As to Craigslist - we'll see? We actually built a pretty robust classification engine that you can run on any html, so we've added about 600 dealerships in California and are planning on running the crawler on dealerships nationally soon if we can get more server money. I think we're hoping that if we provide a free service where you can see what better deals Craigslist has compared to Autotrader etc people will generally think its cool instead of lame. Thanks for checking us out!
This is great. Just literally gave up searching CL for a new car after ten minutes of click/back/click/back and saw this here. Timing couldn't be better, and it's quite intuitive.
I like it. I'm located in Canada and when I put in my canadian zip code first just to get back to the main page again. You should give a notification when someone enters in a zip code you no longer support instead of failing silently.
yeah, that's a major fail on our part. I'll add a notification that only USA is currently supported - thanks for the feedback I honestly hadn't even thought about international stuff yet :P
You agree not to post, email, or otherwise make available Content:
...
u) use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from the Service - unless expressly permitted by craigslist;
I am wondering if you already have permission from craigslist?
I have heard -- anecdotally, at least -- that while that TOS exists, CL practically enforces this if you're (a) straining the site and/or (b) using it for commercial purposes that seem to go against the spirit of CL. [Hence, neat things like Padmapper, the author of which is really like the nicest guy based on limited interactions.]
(Disclosures: I read this a few years ago for another project, and I also happen to know one of the developers of this site.)
I make a point of flagging the various companies that occasionally appear here with scheme for violating craiglist TOS.
In this instance, all the ads that I tried to click-through to had been removed already - which shows one good reason for Craiglist not allowing this stuff.
I usually have half a dozen RSS searches added to my Google reader for items I am keeping an eye out for. Using the advance search operators and RSS feeds, I usually am the first person to reply to ads.
I can't seem to get this to work. I type "Vancouver" in the "near" box and I just get a message that says "Please match the requested format.". What's the requested format? What did I do wrong?
The zipcode doesn't deal with leading zeros on autodetection properly. Mine said "2138" where it should have said "02138", so it took me a minute to realize it was a zip code.
It seems like the auto-detection is off anyway. I'm in 10003, and it said "7927" for me. I'm on a desktop, without any kind of wi-fi or GPS, so not sure where it got that - certainly not by IP
Love it! Searching on value feels like it'd be useful for a trader, but not necessarily an individual with a strict price limit. How about adding a value measure to the boxes? Then users could sort by price but still pick out the real bargains.
Also would be nice to search for several models together and/or criteria rather than models (e.g. "manual hatchback between $7 and $10k").
Definitely, we'd like to add more comparison as to how good of a deal you're getting, but just haven't had time yet.
The hatchback/sedan/... is on our roadmap too. It's a little tricky, because often sellers don't post it explicitly, and doing computer vision on the pictures, would be very hard.
Great. I wondered if you could take whatever you're using for the "Best Value" ordering and display that metric in the boxes (so no need for more analysis).
Maybe you could store which models are always hatchbacks and always sedans, as a starting point (relatively few models have a hatchback version in the US so I think this would get you 80% of the way there). For those where there's a sedan/hatchback version, perhaps assume it's the sedan unless sellers include hatchback keywords - and If in doubt, maybe show the result anyway with a question mark icon?
This is awesome, but maybe consider persisting some basic parameters in the URL string so that I can bookmark a particular page that I like to check often?
* There is no way to get back to the home screen. If I want a blank slate I have to manually clear out the fields.
* I can't bookmark searches, send them to friends or search for multiple models at the same time because everything is cookie based. Having my search from my last session come up when I enter http://www.carsabi.com/ is also a bit creepy.
* Clearing the "max price" field is broken. All future searches come back with zero results. Refreshing the page shows "$0" in the field.
Ah yes, looks like we need to set some kind of sensible default for the maximum price.
Would you prefer to just bookmark searches, or login and be able to "save" them? (have them show up as separate tabs next to Saved Listings, or something like that)
pretty good, although for craigslist, there is really no sense in letting someone search within 14 days.
anything that's a good deal is gone almost right away
I lost out on like a dozen cars before I bought my last one. And that was only because I saw the ad get listed in the previous 5 minutes, and went right away to test drive it.
As far as feedback, 1 bug - when you scroll through the makes, it keeps hiding. Especially annoying if it's a brand at the bottom of the list(i.e. Mercedes).
Feature wise, the map of the car's location isn't that useful, much better would be to just list how many miles away the person is...and maybe even estimate the time to get there.(i.e. I remember thinking oh 30 miles, not that bad...then you spend 45 minutes driving to and from there, and pretty much your entire day is gone, just to see one car)
Yeah, this is totally true. I think we'll be adding a notification system with saved searches soon, but we wanted to see if anyone liked the idea at all first.
Also with the 14 days thing - we're trying to build something that can crawl dealership websites as well, and are hoping to have this going nationally sometime soon. The entire idea is that Autotrader sucks and basically raises the prices for everyone while presenting a shitty interface - for things as large and expensive as cars I think the internet could literally track all instances available, allowing a rational decision process behind purchasing sans prioritization of pre-existing distribution channels or advertising budgets
Before you do much crawling of car dealer websites, you should talk to the companies who build the sites. (Dealer.com/Vinsolutions..etc) They have systems in place that package up the car listings for their dealers and send them in csv/xml format to many sites like Autotrader/Cars.com on a daily basis.
no kidding?! That would make my life soooooooo much easier. If you have any contacts would be stoked to make the connection - my email is dw5ight@gmail.com, else I'll shoot them a line and see if anyone wants to talk to two guys in an apartment :P Thanks!
Part of the problem with this is that nearly all of the best deals I've found on Craigslist (mostly camera lenses) were because the person actually misspelled the one key word in the title, which lead me to be the only person (or one of very few) who noticed the listing.
So I do hope that "Mazda Miata" also looks for listings without the word "Mazda" and also looks for the misspelled "Maita", etc, as well
I purchased my 4Runner like this. 3 reposts over a month with "4 Runner" and dropped the price $1500 each time. He needed to sell it fast. I got a really good deal.
I used www.autotempest.com late last year to find my latest car and I'm glad to see some competition emerging.
After a quick review, two things that strike me:
1. One feature I like about AT is being about to see which cars are in which markets. Even though the search radius may include 5 surrounding cities, it would be nice to see some physical separation between the markets when combing through the results.
2. One feature I DIDN'T like about AT is that in trying to accomplish [1] from above, I often found myself annoyed when nothing was found in specific markets. This resulted in me having to click through the pagination to see if anything existed in other markets. The better way to handle this would have been to show only those cities with results, in order.
104 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadWell done!
For "car guys" you need to allow searching by the platform code. Way more important and specific than the decade-spanning model names. For example "e30" should return '83-91 BMW 3 Series.
Love that you can specify Slushbox/Manual and exclude salvage titles.
Very annoying that middle-clicking car posting titles on the 'grid view' page does not open the cars in new tabs. I want to scan through the list and open all the ones I find interesting, then look through the details one at a time.
Clicking the site's logo (top left) should bring you back to the no-current-search homepage. Not edit the current search. Right now it feels as if you can't entirely clear the search. Clicking back to the homepage should definitely do that.
I use this site for a list of desirable year/model cars. You might get a few ideas from them: http://autoemu.com/
P.S. I updated my original post with a few more suggestions.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3484875
Also, did you get permission from craigslist to index their listings? I was looking into building something like this, but their terms said something along the lines of "don't access our site with a crawler unless we give you permission".
As to Craigslist - we'll see? We actually built a pretty robust classification engine that you can run on any html, so we've added about 600 dealerships in California and are planning on running the crawler on dealerships nationally soon if we can get more server money. I think we're hoping that if we provide a free service where you can see what better deals Craigslist has compared to Autotrader etc people will generally think its cool instead of lame. Thanks for checking us out!
You must be American.
7. CONDUCT
You agree not to post, email, or otherwise make available Content: ...
u) use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from the Service - unless expressly permitted by craigslist;
I am wondering if you already have permission from craigslist?
I have heard -- anecdotally, at least -- that while that TOS exists, CL practically enforces this if you're (a) straining the site and/or (b) using it for commercial purposes that seem to go against the spirit of CL. [Hence, neat things like Padmapper, the author of which is really like the nicest guy based on limited interactions.]
(Disclosures: I read this a few years ago for another project, and I also happen to know one of the developers of this site.)
In this instance, all the ads that I tried to click-through to had been removed already - which shows one good reason for Craiglist not allowing this stuff.
http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/cta?query=nissan&sr...
Heck, while you're in there, make it work world-wide.. CL is, so you may as well be.
Also would be nice to search for several models together and/or criteria rather than models (e.g. "manual hatchback between $7 and $10k").
Good luck!
The hatchback/sedan/... is on our roadmap too. It's a little tricky, because often sellers don't post it explicitly, and doing computer vision on the pictures, would be very hard.
Maybe you could store which models are always hatchbacks and always sedans, as a starting point (relatively few models have a hatchback version in the US so I think this would get you 80% of the way there). For those where there's a sedan/hatchback version, perhaps assume it's the sedan unless sellers include hatchback keywords - and If in doubt, maybe show the result anyway with a question mark icon?
1. didn't work for me until I realized I have to enable cookies?
2. how do I search for any kind of hatchback?
3. did my scrollbar just turn pink in chrome? really? Are we back in the 1990s with IE ?
4. be sure to get permission BEFORE you start crawling them:
http://www.google.com/search?q=craigslist+sues
It'd be super neat to associate that may not be explicit in your fields or the source CL data with certain make/models.
* There is no way to get back to the home screen. If I want a blank slate I have to manually clear out the fields.
* I can't bookmark searches, send them to friends or search for multiple models at the same time because everything is cookie based. Having my search from my last session come up when I enter http://www.carsabi.com/ is also a bit creepy.
* Clearing the "max price" field is broken. All future searches come back with zero results. Refreshing the page shows "$0" in the field.
Would you prefer to just bookmark searches, or login and be able to "save" them? (have them show up as separate tabs next to Saved Listings, or something like that)
The problem with the maximum price is not that I'm entering "$0" it's that I literally can't reset the input to a null state.
anything that's a good deal is gone almost right away
I lost out on like a dozen cars before I bought my last one. And that was only because I saw the ad get listed in the previous 5 minutes, and went right away to test drive it.
As far as feedback, 1 bug - when you scroll through the makes, it keeps hiding. Especially annoying if it's a brand at the bottom of the list(i.e. Mercedes).
Feature wise, the map of the car's location isn't that useful, much better would be to just list how many miles away the person is...and maybe even estimate the time to get there.(i.e. I remember thinking oh 30 miles, not that bad...then you spend 45 minutes driving to and from there, and pretty much your entire day is gone, just to see one car)
Also with the 14 days thing - we're trying to build something that can crawl dealership websites as well, and are hoping to have this going nationally sometime soon. The entire idea is that Autotrader sucks and basically raises the prices for everyone while presenting a shitty interface - for things as large and expensive as cars I think the internet could literally track all instances available, allowing a rational decision process behind purchasing sans prioritization of pre-existing distribution channels or advertising budgets
Also will fix the make thing. Thanks!!!
in all that time i was still "searching" craigslist, and I could see the same cars over and over. A few were fast, of course.
ended up getting the car 30% below the KBB value
I was just looking for any car in my budget that was in perfect shape. So, not unfair to pair almost the book value.
So I do hope that "Mazda Miata" also looks for listings without the word "Mazda" and also looks for the misspelled "Maita", etc, as well
It is missing a model :(
After a quick review, two things that strike me:
1. One feature I like about AT is being about to see which cars are in which markets. Even though the search radius may include 5 surrounding cities, it would be nice to see some physical separation between the markets when combing through the results.
2. One feature I DIDN'T like about AT is that in trying to accomplish [1] from above, I often found myself annoyed when nothing was found in specific markets. This resulted in me having to click through the pagination to see if anything existed in other markets. The better way to handle this would have been to show only those cities with results, in order.
Good work so far!