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

[braver55b]

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]

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

Just Curious,

Bob

[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.

[bj]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Chris]

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]

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]

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

[wige]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by rickvidallon

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.

Or the opposite. When I write this, a story is told on CNN, that Miss New Jersy has been blackmailed on one such site.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

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?

Nothing strange about it. Well, I DO think it IS strange that this even exists, but I don't see anything strange about the logic or analogy; low/no PR=harmed traffic.

No, I don't even use any G toolbar, not about to. All I'm saying, repeating, is what G has stated at their forums and blogs, and that is the main reason for pages going into their supp index is due to PR being too low.

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

Sure, even with any PR not withstanding. If fact that's about the only way to get any traffic TO these pages if they have low PR and are not in G's main index due to low PR. Of course that's starts the causality loop of "who wants to link to a webpage not indexed or with PR0" and your pages will never get any freakin' PR if no one links to them, and no one will want to link to a PR0 page, and on and on and on......

Bob was asking how they can generate traffic from CL since their internal pages have no PR, and he's right, they can't, unless the traffic generated is not from G but from direct clicks from those CL pages. (Or again, like I said, it's all moot if CL is "exempt" from the typical site owners' penalties due to low PR). FAIK CL's PR0 pages may be indexed in the main index, I never checked.

I'm simply just drawing a logical correlation between low/no PR and no/reduced/very little traffic, which can indeed exist by G's own admission.

[wige]

But in my experience Google does crawl craigslist ads, (I know this because when I look at the webmaster tools I can see every add we have posted on craigslist up to about three days prior, listed in the incoming links area) and a craigslist ad is not one incoming link, but rather several because there are CL mirror sites that scrape the craigslist ads for "archival" purposes and make the content available with their own ads. Many of these pages also show up as incoming links.

I know someone will say that even though the link is there, the low PR of the pages makes this link worthless. That is not supported by my experiences either, because in addition to the increased targeted traffic from the ads themselves, we have seen our site jump in Google rankings for extremely competitive terms through carefully applied craigslist advertising. Also, pages on craigslist are transient. Ads go away after 45 days. The pagerank of a page is updated infrequently at best, so what is shown in the toolbar and through other sources may not be accurate, and pages especially on a rapidly changing site like CL may have vastly different page rank than what is shown in a toolbar.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Clint1

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

Don't know; it's not problem for me.

Thread Tools > Subscribe to this Thread works as advertised.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Don't know; it's not problem for me.

Thread Tools > Subscribe to this Thread works as advertised.

Ahh thank you.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Clint1

Ahh thank you.

You're welcome. The presence of the Subscribe function just isn't as obvious as it once was.

Also, once subscribed, the "Subscribe" option automatically changes to "Unsubscribe," so that one need not navigate to their Control Panel to do such.

BTW, has anyone noticed any of their Subscription Notification Types being mysteriously reset to "None?"

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by deepsand

BTW, has anyone noticed any of their Subscription Notification Types being mysteriously reset to "None?"

Where is that area? I don't see that in the User CP area, nor below right now as I'm replying.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Clint1

Where is that area? I don't see that in the User CP area, nor below right now as I'm replying.

{Edit Profile}{User CP}User Control Panel > {List Subscriptions}Subscriptions displays list of subscriptions. 2nd column from right, entitled "Notification," displays which, of the 4 available, notification type is currently in effect for each subscription.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by deepsand

{Edit Profile}{User CP}User Control Panel > {List Subscriptions}Subscriptions displays list of subscriptions. 2nd column from right, entitled "Notification," displays which, of the 4 available, notification type is currently in effect for each subscription.

Ok, all of mine under "Notification" are set to "Instant". I'll check it again in a day or so.

[braver55b]

On second thought, don't rule ebay out, after all craigslist is not fully monetizing theire site (ie no adsense ads etc) and ebay will spend some major "coinage" promoting theire new site.

[bj]

On second thought, don't rule ebay out, after all craigslist is not fully monetizing theire site (ie no adsense ads etc) and ebay will spend some major "coinage" promoting theire new site.

That's exactly the reason I'll choose craigslist over any Ebay Competitor. I can just go about my business and see what I want to see, and easily find what I need on a well arranged and simple to use site, without a bunch of annoying flashing commercial crapola being shoved in my face (and that's WITH a flashblocker!) or hiding and obscuring the things I want to get to. There is NOTHING MORE ANNOYING than not being able to find a crucial bit of navigation amongst the google ad trash.

Craigslist does what it does very well. And don't for a second think that Craig isn't making a bunch of dough off that site. There are a lot of different sorts of success. Craig found one. Anyone who tries to break into this market will have an uphill climb for sure.

[braver55b]

Craigslist for a while had a situation where you place an ad and it would say its active, though when you check the results after the required 15 minutes and your ad is nowhere to be found.

Despite this Craigslist is by far more effective than that new ebay classified site will ever be.

[kgun]

"It's always fun to see what people will do with the tools we release. Sometimes they use them in "interesting" ways. Or, in this case, they're used to come to an amusing conclusion".

........................

"These descriptive statistical data show that successful Web 2.0 communities are pretty slow. This is not necessarily a problem of slow Web servers or Internet connections, but of the amount of data, the number of HTTP requests, too much JavaScript, Flash, images and other media, HTML structure and the time it takes for the browser to render the pages".
Source: Yahoo! Developer Network Home - Welcome!

May be enough traffic?

Related thread:
Performance Research, Part 1: What the 80/20 Rule Tells Us about Reducing HTTP Requests

[Volusion]

eBay is a partial owner of craigslist, so I think they'll be just fine.

[Devesh100]

Craiglistg is not in its last legs.
It is still very useful for the classifieds.

[Ashiro]

Can't say I've ever really 'got' Craiglist. I also don't think we have it here in the UK or if we do its not very popular.

If its on its last legs good riddance. Too much rubbish on the net cluttering it up already so if it drops off its merely evolution in action.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Ashiro

Can't say I've ever really 'got' Craiglist. I also don't think we have it here in the UK or if we do its not very popular.

If its on its last legs good riddance. Too much rubbish on the net cluttering it up already so if it drops off its merely evolution in action.

"Rubbish?" "Cluttering up the net?"

Is someone forcing you to visit it? Is it interfering with your life? I submit that the answer to both is a resounding "no."

Given your admissions that you neither"get it" nor have anything with which to compare, your pronouncements are specious at best.

At its least, it's certainly a lot more palatable & varied than English cuisine!

[kgun]

I use CL in my link collection. I do not know the (quality of) the site well enough, and as long as it brings traffic, that is sale to Mary and Joe, they will love CL. If it brings more traffic /dollar spent than other services, they will love it even more.

There is no lack of information / content on the internet. Internet is in a way the worlds greatest anarchy created by English Tim Berners-Lee. It is not only Bill Gates information super high way, but also the spam and scam super high way. There are formal requirements if you want to write a book. There are no formal requirements for putting up a web site (the only to put up a .NO site and that is good is that you register a company and give information to the government). I can write about fashion (and I have a fashion .NO site since I find many fashion sites and collect the links) even if I do not have a clue aside from the fact that two of my daughets are working in the industry.

Tim Berners-Lee and his coleagues try to set web standards and create a science of the web. Is that only of academic interest or is it of general interest? Is it more for .edu, .org and .gov domains than .biz, .com and .net domains?

Note: Jim may have a bad site, but a good physical product to sell that he advertises on CL or elswhere where he also links back to his site. In economics, as long as marginal income is greater than marginal cost, pay for an input like ad is profitable.

It is optimal to increase the use of an input to production (of that good or service) until marginal income = marginal cost. This law of economics implies that some sites will die a natural death while a smaller percentage will grow and prosper.

[Chief Ken]

According to Alexa, Craigslist ranks 34 world wide and 10 domestically. So no worries there.