CL posting help - apartment post only shows up under specific searches

April 13, 2014 6:17 AM

I'm trying to rent an apartment on Craigslist. The issue is that after my post has been successfully put up, it only appears when searching criteria fit the details of my post. What I mean: It's a 3 bedroom, so if someone searches in my area for 3BR, the ad will appear. However, if someone just goes into the general "all apartments" section the ad does not appear. What gives? Looking through the application section again, I don't see how I could have done things differently. Am I missing a radio button to do this? Should I classify it as 0-3 BR in the ad setup? Does CL charge for different add access?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Did you just recently post it? Sometimes it simply takes a little while for posts to show up in the main... thingy.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:33 AM on April 13, 2014

Response by poster: No, it's been up there for 6 days. I'm definitely missing something.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 6:39 AM on April 13, 2014

I'm on my phone and can't search as much as I'd like, but try Googling "Craigslist ghosting" and see what comes up. I seem to remember there being a pretty well-documented issue with Craigslist not posting certain ads as part of their broad category results, and it possibly having to do with there being certain characters in the post title or body (like dashes, slashes, parentheses, etc). Unfortunately it's only a problem sometimes, seemingly randomly. The Craigslist forums may have some ideas on how to avoid this on a future posting.
posted by justonegirl at 6:42 AM on April 13, 2014

but try Googling "Craigslist ghosting"

Here is a pretty good explanation. And yes, that could very well be the issue.

Posts do take a while to show up as showbiz_liz noted. However, it is more on the order of an hour or so, not 6 days.

Check out the "Flag Help" forum on CL. Or even post a question there. The exact reason you post is not appearing could be for a number of reasons.
posted by lampshade at 7:11 AM on April 13, 2014