Is Craigslist On Its Last Legs? Ebay Launched A Competitor.

braver55b · #1 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 03:09 PM

Have any of you used craigslist to generate traffic? I have and it works and now a new competitor looms on the horizon.

Kijiji.com (a mouthful meaning village in Swahili) its owned by ebay (by the way ebay currently holds a 25% stake in craigslist) and has been operating kijiji overseas and have launched the US site not too long ago.

Has anyone used this new site with any real degree of success?
I doubt they would ever catch up to craigslist 9 in alexa (US) 46 worldwide.

ergobob · #2 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 05:35 PM

How do you generate traffic on Graigslist? I see that none of the individual product pages have any PR.

Just Curious,

Bob

tomcatuk · #3 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 05:47 PM

I've posted on Craigslist a few times. It can bring you a few visitors, but not nearly enough for it to be worth the effort from an SEO viewpoint in my experience.

Hey! My photo is live - hurrah! 3 point to whoever correctly names the cat.

bj · #4 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 05:58 PM

Craigslist is FABULOUS for what it's for-- classifieds. Use it for a yard sale ad or to sell a car locally or rent an apartment and it can't be beat. I've used it very successfully for promoting local events and for the type of things classifieds are best at-- selling things that are too big to ship easily.

And Craigslist is very easy to use, whether you're shopping or selling/promoting.

I doubt Ebay will put a dent in Craigslist. I guess I could be proved wrong, but I just don't see it happening. (Especially given Ebay's penchant for creating something great then jacking up prices until it becomes useless.)

rickvidallon · #5 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 06:08 PM

I think it depends on what you are using it for. I have real estate clients who swear by it.

I believe that directory sites and Blogs are fast becoming a medium for improper conduct. Remember the woman who's house was cleaned out because someone listed all the contents in her home were free and up for grabs. She came home to an empty house.

Who is going to decide; What is a legit posting or comment?

The blogoshere is reshaping thousands of communications departments around the world because of its power to help or harm businesses and individuals.

We all like the helping part; it's the harmful part that has everyone running scared because blogs, whether known or anonymous, are nearly impossible to get removed from websites or search engines.

However, there are ways to defend against the disgruntled employee, dissatisfied client and competitor that is blogging anonymously and damaging your reputation. If someone punches you in the nose then you have the right to punch back. I say, "Walk softly and carry a big keyboard."
A Virginia-based yacht racing organization was getting pummeled by nasty online comments posted by a previous participate with an axe to grind. The poster making the complaints owned the blog where he was posting his comments. Every time someone Googled the name of the organization, the blog would pop up in the search results one or two positions beneath their listing.

When the client came to me they wanted to know if we could somehow block the offending blog’s listing on Google.

The short answer was no.

Google's not in business to give you the truth, it's in business to provide what you think is relevant. The same is true for Yahoo, Ask, MSN, AOL and other major search engines.
To combat a negative blog, a company must get Google and other search engines to list relevant sites (web site, blogs and articles) that contain positive information about your business and push the negative sites back to page 2 or 3 in the search results.
This is what Visionefx did for our racing client. Among other things, we posted positive feedback in what I refer to as "Power Ezine Websites." We also posted positive feedback in related industry sites and blogs. After a few weeks we began to see positive results, After a few months we dominated the first page of Google with references containing positive comments.

The proliferation of UTube and MySpace has created a very effective tool in counteracting negative comments on the web made about you or your business. However, just building a "positive comments" website will not be enough. You need to know your way around these networks in order to attract traffic to your particular page. But it is only one of several tools that you should utilize in helping you to dominate in first page search engine results.
Shaping Google Search Listings
I recently read an article in the Washington Post about a company called Reputation Management, a company that works to rehabilitate reputations by helping shape Google search listings. The important thing to remember is that each situation should be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

A Google spokeswoman recently told the Indy Star, "Google does not object in principle to people adding positive content to outrank the negative. If you use spammy and manipulative techniques to get this positive content to rank highly, we may take action on it."

Rick Vidallon

fbnewtz · #6 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 06:32 PM

Craigslist isn't going anywhere. They are cracking down on the automated posting programs I believe and I think that if you look at the number of ads in Craigslist compared to kijiji.com then there is no comparison. Thanks for the heads up on the new place to market things though.

I think that getting traffic and SEO are two completely different things. Yes, SEO is a way to get traffic. But posting a link in a classifieds section has nothing really to do with SEO. It might only be a short term fix, but it does work.

Fred

halfmexi · #7 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 06:44 PM

We use Craig's List for real estate and e-commerce clients and it works great - brings in a couple hundred extra visitors (on average) for my clients monthly. Plus, alot of times we see our keywords picked up by Google on these ads within a week. It takes alot longer to be found with MSN and Yahoo unfortunately - if at all.

Orion · #8 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 06:51 PM

kijiji and craigslist have both been around here for years, I've haven't used kijiji in about 4 or 5 years but it's nothing new.

both will always exist, you'll find certain markets will favour one over the other, but this is a pretty big world, there's enough room for the two of them.

relding · #9 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 06:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomcatuk

I've posted on Craigslist a few times. It can bring you a few visitors, but not nearly enough for it to be worth the effort from an SEO viewpoint in my experience.

Hey! My photo is live - hurrah! 3 point to whoever correctly names the cat.

I think it's Jess (the cat with postman Pat?)

orphans · #10 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 08:15 PM

Just my opinion, but I think ebay bought a bunch of craigslist to control it. Craigslist was originally dedicated to local marketing. Clever code writers were creating bots to search all of the CL sites and post ads on all of the cities all at once.

As the postings were free I suspect that ebay saw this as a threat to their pay-per-ad empire. So they bought out the competition. Now you can post your ads on CL for free all day long. But only in your city.

For web marketers like most on this forum, that's useless. You are advertising on the web because you want to sell nationwide or worldwide. If you can't post your add in ALL of the craigslist cities, it isn't going to do you much good.

I was looking for an RV campground membership. They are ridiculously expensive when you buy them from the campground. Often $5,000 or more. Lots of people buy them and then never use them, and then sell them on CL, usually for $1,000 or less. It really doesn't matter where the person lives, as along as they are members of the group you want to join.

I found a little program that searches ALL of the CL sites. When I started reading the forums for the program I found that CL checks for programs like this, and if you use it more than a couple of times they delete your account, and may even ban your IP.

That level of enforcement seemed to come with the purchase by ebay. They clearly want CL strictly limited to local buying and selling. They are protecting their ebay sales model today, and will figure out how to make money from CL later.

My opinion and worth every penny you paid for it.

Dave

mycoygroup · #11 (**permalink**) 07-09-2007, 08:27 PM

Well, CL isn't going anywhere anytime soon although I see expansion in it's future which could taint it's brand if done wrong. Now as competition, I don't see any direct competition that will know it off the top of the online classified post but the bigger you are the less able you are to serve everyone and that will open up an opportunity for a smaller company here and there.

As for using it for business, I've used CL for business leads with great success but it required a lot of work on my part. In the small business services section, you basically have to post an ad just about every hour on the hour if you want to be noticed. The trick is to have different ads and a catchall email address/account. You will also have to deal with competitors flagging your ads just to clear a path for themselves. Since my business was web design, I posted to many different states and sections. That worked well since I was able to get clients from outside of NYC, where CL is most congested. Still postcards and SEO work great in conjunction with CL ads.

So CL isn't going anywhere as long as people need free leads.

dbramley · #12 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 04:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by relding

I think it's Jess (the cat with postman Pat?)

Yep - that's my guess too!

On a side note I used to love that show when I was a kid!

Clint1 · #13 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 08:56 AM

Why are we forced to reply to threads now just to subscribe to them??

Chris · #14 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ergobob

How do you generate traffic on Graigslist? I see that none of the individual product pages have any PR.

what does PageRank have to do with traffic generation?

Clint1 · #15 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris

what does PageRank have to do with traffic generation?

When I first saw Bob's post on that, I thought the same thing as you. But after thinking about it; pages will be in G's supplemental hell index if there is low/no PR, therefore the pages will not show up in any search (unless the results are so few G is forced to go to the supplemental index for results). Of course, CL could be getting special preferential treatment just like Ebay, Amazon, and many others and their low/no PR pages would still be in G's main index.

wwriches · #16 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 10:33 AM

So, in other words there are no "true" competitors with CL.

**wige** · #17 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wwriches

So, in other words there are no "true" competitors with CL.

Sure there are. Local newspaper web sites, job sites like monster and dice, etc. But they are competitors the way MapQuest is a competitor for Google. They focus more on a limited scope. They may serve their area or demographic better than CL, but they can't truly compete with CL on a broad enough scope to be a threat.

**incrediblehelp** · #18 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clint1

pages will be in G's supplemental hell index if there is low/no PR, therefore the pages will not show up in any search (unless the results are so few G is forced to go to the supplemental index for results)

I dont believe this. I dont see the connection. I see pages all of the time rank with little or no PR.

Clint1 · #19 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 04:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I dont believe this. I dont see the connection. I see pages all of the time rank with little or no PR.

The main reason why pages go into G's supp index is due to low PR. That's not my opinion, but straight from G employees themselves.

When a webpage is in the supp index, it will not show up in any searches unless: there are too few results from the main index; (Or, you're one of the "special sites" like I mentioned that get special treatment and are immune to issues regarding internal pages with no or low PR). In my case, my pages in the supp index are screwed. Unique one-of-kind product pages that I'm the ONLY person that carries, and they've been removed from the main index due to no PR or PR too low and sequestered in the bowels of supplemental hell. These pages will not show in any search, unless there's maybe 5 or so total results. This is how G penalizes one for low/no PR and how it affects traffic

Therefore, as someone asked, "what does PageRank have to do with traffic generation?", this is how it can affect traffic generation at least from G.

**incrediblehelp** · #20 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clint1

Therefore, as someone asked, "what does PageRank have to do with traffic generation?", this is how it can affect traffic generation at least from G.

hmmm strange. I would hope your not talking about Google toolbar PR. If so then as I stated that PR has nothing to do with traffic generation.

If your talking about internal PR, then your not going to know what it is anyways so why even associate it with a pages lack of traffic?

I do agree that getting IBL's to your documents/websites is an obvious way of traffic generation.