Show HN: Craigslist Car Search
carsabi.com
carsabi.com
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?
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 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.)
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!
Well done!
* 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.
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 :(
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.
I'd like to see query parameters stored in the URL instead. As others have mentioned, it'd be nice to be able to bookmark pages and you currently can't. In addition to the bookmarking use case, I'd want to be able to email links to the results (e.g., so my dad could check them out).
It was also initially confusing to return to the homepage to find my past query, not the search form. Even if you don't get around to embedding search parameters in URL right away, consider adding a clear button to erase all of my input and let me start fresh.
More of a nitpick, but when I made a typo on my zip code on the main page and hit submit, it also erased my entry for the search box. The form data should be persisted even if there is an error, and the problem input should be highlighted in red or something.
You created a really nice site. Unfortunately, if you have any success CL will make legal moves to shut you down as they did with NotifyWire (which I created).
My software actually reduced server load on CL's servers when compared to the alternative (everyone using an RSS reader to do the same thing). So don't believe the BS about server load, they want complete control.
If you want to talk about what happened, send me an email ian@notifywire.com
In order to jump on the hottest deals, I would set up an IFTTT condition to email me when new queries were posted on Craigslist. Would be cool to have some monitoring with this site.
Regardless, very nice work!
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!
Main feedback - browser refresh, back/forward, tabs, middle-click should work, e.g.
- refresh now loses half the state (why half?)
- opening 'Click to view listing' messes up state (loses saved)
- want to be able to middle click on 'Details' to open in new tab
Nice to have: integration with Edmunds to appraise the car
thanks!
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:
It'd be super neat to associate that may not be explicit in your fields or the source CL data with certain make/models.
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.
http://atlanta.craigslist.org/search/cto?query=saturn+sc2...
We're also experimenting with some structured parsing for the universal dealership parser we alluded to - this means trying to figure out which part of the page has a listing so we dont accidentally report the mileage from a warranty or similar listings lower down the page... turns out to be a fairly tricky problem but its also a ton of fun to work on! Will keep you posted if we start having a ton of success automagically crawling the interweb. Thanks!
You must be American.
Heck, while you're in there, make it work world-wide.. CL is, so you may as well be.
Don't you guys like the M cars? :)
What format was requested? I tried a postcode, and suburb, neither work.
Confusing as :(
::facepalm::
i'm not after one specific car. i'm buying a used car.
i have a fixed budget and a some cars that I would avoid. everything else is fair game.
craigslist is the only one that get's it correct.
1. put your price.
2. get a bunch of crap you don't like
3. add -crap1 to the search
4. repeat 2 and 3 until you get things you like
5. select a few, call, inspect, buy.
Also Craigslist will probably shut down the linked site soon, it's quite unfortunate how Craigslist essentially took the entire FSBO car market, but won't innovate in the way that this site shows it could.
What they have now is a bunch of unstructured data that users have to sift through.
CL is great, but the lack of innovation doesn't make any sense to me.
in CL you don't think about posting, but your ad will be removed by other sellers with higher price (happened to my nexus one when i tried to sell) and buried in a couple hours. and expire in a couple days. And then, the READER has to put in all the time the writers didn't put.
on other sites, you waste some time to write, but you can be sure you will not be removed without reason, the ad last longer, and the buyer can get there quickly.
I think we'd also like to add some basic recommendation engine type stuff soon - my last car was a $500 tercel so feel you on the ubercheap classification. If we had a "Sort by Cheapest Reliable" option would that be useful?
Thanks!
Then provide a keyword, mileage and price filter on left--may be use range sliders?