How to Find Old Deleted Posts & Ads on Craigslist

If you are looking for an old deleted post on Craigslist, here are a few ways to try to find the ad.

Craigslist posts usually expire after 7-45 days (depending type of post). So it can be tricky to find a specific post if it’s been awhile since you last saw it. Also know that if the post was deleted or flagged for removal before it was cached or archived by Google, then it is probably impossible to see the post again.

With that said, I will try to help you find that old Craigslist post with these tips.

Are You Trying To Find Your Own Expired Posts?

This is the easiest way to find old deleted posts on Craigslist. If you’re looking for a post that you created but has expired, you can find it in your Craigslist account.

Go to https://accounts.craigslist.org/login

Log in to your account.

Then click the “All postings” link to see all of your previously posted ads.

Check for Cached Versions of the Ad with Google

If you don’t know the URL or don’t have the link where the Craigslist ad was originally posted, you can try searching on Google for a cached version. If you remember any information from the post, you might be able to find the most recent version (before it was deleted) in Google’s cache.

To do this, go to Google.com and copy & paste this into the search bar: site:craigslist.org

Then add a space and include any words you can remember from the ad. Here are a couple of example of search you might do to find deleted ads for trucks and other products:

• site:craigslist.org ford truck
• site:craigslist.org sony tv
• site:craigslist.org dining room table

Then if you see any listings in search results that look like the deleted ad, click the three dots:

Then click the “Cached” button on the window that pops up.

Note: This does not always return great results and does not always show the content of the deleted page. This is just a way to try to find an old deleted Craigslist post.

Use The Wayback Machine To See Old Craigslist Posts

This tip only works if you have the exact URL/link where the ad was originally posted. Check your browser history on or around the date you saw the ad before it was removed from Craigslist. If you don’t know the exact URL where the ad was, then this will not work.

Go to the Wayback Machine: https://archive.org/web/

Copy & paste the ads’ URL into the search bar.

Then click the blue circles to find dates & archived versions (if they exist) for the Craigslist ad.

Conclusion About Finding Old & Cached Versions of Deleted Craigslist Ads

While these methods of finding old Craigslist ads will not always work because it depends on how fast Google or the Wayback Machine crawls a post and indexes/caches it, these are the best ways to try and find the deleted posts.

Now that you know how to find old cached Craigslist posts, learn how to sell on Craigslist, learn where to list yard sales on Craigslist, or learn how to search all of Craigslist nationwide! Thanks for reading.