HowTo: filter out other towns with same name on Craiglist
November 5, 2022 9:48 AM Subscribe
Is there a way I can make craigslist useful again by filtering out the dozen other towns in the USA with the same name as mine?
I live in a town with a name that is shared by over a dozen other cities and towns throughout the USA. I would like to use craigslist to look locally for housing, things for sale, etc, but every time I see something I want to click on it's a crapshoot because there's a pretty good chance that whatever the interesting thing is, is on the other side of the country in one of the other Townsvilles (not the actual name).
There's 3 "main" cities with this name and all 3 are about 40k-50k in population and it seems they all kind of bleed over into each other on craigslist.
I live in a town with a name that is shared by over a dozen other cities and towns throughout the USA. I would like to use craigslist to look locally for housing, things for sale, etc, but every time I see something I want to click on it's a crapshoot because there's a pretty good chance that whatever the interesting thing is, is on the other side of the country in one of the other Townsvilles (not the actual name).
There's 3 "main" cities with this name and all 3 are about 40k-50k in population and it seems they all kind of bleed over into each other on craigslist.
Response by poster: > you're making sure to go to the correct regional Craigslist
As best as I can tell, yes. If I go to the base craigslist.org and let it detect my location, it puts me out to townsville.craigslist.org and it lists all the correct neighboring towns. I think the issue is the listers in the other towns are posting their listings in the wrong subdomain, but I don't know if there's really a way to correct that, so I figured I'd ask.
posted by glonous keming at 9:55 AM on November 5, 2022
As best as I can tell, yes. If I go to the base craigslist.org and let it detect my location, it puts me out to townsville.craigslist.org and it lists all the correct neighboring towns. I think the issue is the listers in the other towns are posting their listings in the wrong subdomain, but I don't know if there's really a way to correct that, so I figured I'd ask.
posted by glonous keming at 9:55 AM on November 5, 2022
Best answer: What about filtering your searches to only show results within 100 miles of your zipcode?
posted by aubilenon at 10:01 AM on November 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by aubilenon at 10:01 AM on November 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
In my experience, some regional craigslists are useable, and some are not.
posted by aniola at 10:10 AM on November 5, 2022
posted by aniola at 10:10 AM on November 5, 2022
There’s not since they’re accidentally posting to your city. The best you can do is use a custom user styles plugin to hide location descriptions (zips, area codes, neighborhoods) that are from other towns.
posted by michaelh at 10:14 AM on November 5, 2022
posted by michaelh at 10:14 AM on November 5, 2022
Response by poster: aubilenon's suggestion helped the most. it's still problematic but it cuts down on some misposts. thanks, everyone!
posted by glonous keming at 1:40 PM on November 11, 2022
posted by glonous keming at 1:40 PM on November 11, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by stormyteal at 9:50 AM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]