Craigslist Search Tips

One day I was searching for concert tickets on Craigslist. It was a hot ticket and I was searching the day before and the day of the concert (my fault for procrastinating).

Unfortunately, when I was searching the band’s name, it kept pulling up all of the “WANTED” posts from other people that were looking to go to the same concert.

Try This Kind of Search to Filter Results

I decided to try a search with the band’s name with -wanted in the search box. All of a sudden, all of the posts with the word “wanted” dissappeared. My search looked like this: black keys -wanted

That search pulled up all of the posts with the words “black keys” and kept out the posts with the word “wanted” because I put the minus sign directly in front of the unwanted keyword.

For this blog post, I did an iPod vs. iPod Touch search. For my first search, I only typed “ipod” into the search box. Here are the results:

As you can see, the results bring up all posts with the word “ipod”. For the sake of this post, lets pretend that I absolutely do not want an iPod Touch.

IPOD Touch

When I search “ipod”, it brings up a bunch of ads for the iPod Touch. So, I enter this for my next search: ipod -touch

Here are the results:

That search takes out all of the posts with the word “touch”. Although I am not looking for a car radio or Audi car, it does weed out the item I am not looking for (the iPod Touch).

This gives me a better chance of seeing ads posted for the iPod Classic, Nano, or Shuffle without seeing ads for the iPod Touch.

Use the minus sign to your advantage when searching for products on Craigslist.

It will help narrow down your search results by taking out the item you don’t want.

Also, be sure to check out my guide: How to Sell on Craigslist. Or learn how to search all of craigslist.

Other Resources

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eBay Facts

Craigslist History