for those of you who use Craig's List

Just spoke with a higher-up over at Craig's list, and they are about to put Ghosting into MAJOR overdrive. Basically they are going to kill all commercial listers with PVAs and even harder logical captchas (instead of garbled letters, now they are going to simple mathematics and trivia tests.

Just spoke with a higher-up over at Craig's list, and they are about to put Ghosting into MAJOR overdrive. Basically they are going to kill all commercial listers with PVAs and even harder logical captchas (instead of garbled letters, now they are going to simple mathematics and trivia tests.

 

Sorry, PVA= phone verified accounts. And it has to be a non pre-paid or a non-VOIP PVA account. So that gig is up, too. He was estimating that they were going to cut listing by about 65-70% and cut posting traffic by 50-60%. This is a very big deal, as Craig's List has become very important to SEO lately. Really puts things in a top-spin off the cliff for smaller advertisers who can't afford 10,000 PVAs and IP addresses. The big guys will still go black hat, and they are the primary offenders, IMHO. Hurts me bad.

Where there is a will, there's a way. You'll be fine. Just start thinking of new approaches!

I always been curious to know where craigs is headquartered at? But yeah bad news for the small guys.

I always been curious to know where craigs is headquartered at? But yeah bad news for the small guys.

 

San Fran I believe.

I always been curious to know where craigs is headquartered at? But yeah bad news for the small guys.

 

San Fran, near the corner of 9th and Judah, yellow house.

 

How I know:

My sister in law used to live in the first floor of this house while cl's offices were on the second floor with a seperate entrance. Lowlifes used to break into her place all the time to see if they could get computers from Craigslist. Once while her roommate was home asleep in the place. Her boyfriend had to fight off the fucker.

San Fran, near the corner of 9th and Judah, yellow house.

 

How I know:

My sister in law used to live in the first floor of this house while cl's offices were on the second floor with a seperate entrance. Lowlifes used to break into her place all the time to see if they could get computers from Craigslist. Once while her roommate was home asleep in the place. Her boyfriend had to fight off the fucker.

 

that's a crazy story!

Wait, am I supposed to feel bad that they are going to make it harder for spambots to clutter the site with garbage for the purpose of SEO?

 

Or am I missing the point.

I have almost stopped viewing CL for anything. Too many dealers and too much junk postings.

I always been curious to know where craigs is headquartered at? But yeah bad news for the small guys.

 

Good new for me so I don't have to search through 100 spam posts only to find a real person.

I have almost stopped viewing CL for anything. Too many dealers and too much junk postings.

I view it very rarely now for the same reason. One of the largest dealers in this area use CL all the time too. Clutters it up, this dealer has been in the area for 30+ years and all the normal forms of advertising they do, people know who you are. Only people this is hurting is the little guy dealer, since you can still check out the FSBO.

Sorry, PVA= phone verified accounts. And it has to be a non pre-paid or a non-VOIP PVA account. So that gig is up, too. He was estimating that they were going to cut listing by about 65-70% and cut posting traffic by 50-60%. This is a very big deal, as Craig's List has become very important to SEO lately. Really puts things in a top-spin off the cliff for smaller advertisers who can't afford 10,000 PVAs and IP addresses. The big guys will still go black hat, and they are the primary offenders, IMHO. Hurts me bad.

 

 

But CL has required PVA for quite a while or am I missing something ? They always require me to sign in and verify my phone number for pretty much anything that I have listed on there for at least a yr maybe longer. I just use it to sell random crap lying around the house that I don't need like an old cell phone or a desk. But there are way too many commercial listings on there.

PVAs aren't the problem. The problem is that Craig's List has a staff member (I think her name is Lauren) that picks, seemingly at random, IP addresses to be Ghosted.

 

Ghosting, along with the PVA and the IP blocking doesn't hurt the mega spammers. It only hurts the little guy who doesn't have a staff of 20 sitting around doing captchas, PVAs etc. The big guys have massive data centers and people to stay under the radar for as long as they need. Sucks.

 

They will still go Black Hat to stay on the site, and I'd have to build an entire army of PVAs and white-list IP addresses. Craig's List is the new Fleabay, it accounts for 75%+ of my sales leads and probably 95% of my buy leads.

 

This particular activity, like I said, is well-intentioned by Craig's List. The problem is that in the execution the giant net sweeps up thousands of little guys and the big guys just skirt out of the way. Craig's list has something like 20 or 30 employees or something. Some of my black hat competitors (which I am not, we are legit and local, 100% across the board) have 3,000 people in data centers in India and South Dakota. It actually makes more sense to be a nasty spammer than just a small business selling local goods. I don't think they've thought this out...

 

Really going to hurt the small guy, and help the spambots.

By the way it's now the 10th most visited site in the USA and it has 32 employees. That's pretty damn impressive.

what will happen to car dealers?

 

what will happen to car dealers?

 

Depends on how you list. If you list locally, you are very likely not going to be able to any longer. Once your IP address gets randomly selected, you can't get off the craig's list black list. I know it sounds crazy, but it's entirely arbitrary. The Ghosting that CL does is completely unfair. No amount of reasoning seems to help, they know that it's arbitrary and they just say "hey, it's a free site, if you don't like it then don't pay for it."

 

 

Okay well it's been put into effect, our visits are down from 3,000 an hour to less than 50 an hour. Wonderful. All of our 5 PVA'd accounts are dead, nothing but ghosts. We've figured out that if you remove 100% of the HTML and use no external tags for images that it seems to keep them from ghosting. It IS category-specific as well.

 

This *sucks* in a major way.

Are they offering any type of paid subscription or registering with them as a business and getting a pass? Or did they just pull the rug out from under you completely?

Are they offering any type of paid subscription or registering with them as a business and getting a pass? Or did they just pull the rug out from under you completely?

 

I'd be ecstatic about paying for a subscription. Rug:Pulled.

 

Again, the problem is not the intention of the policy- it's that the Black Hatters have tens of thousands of IP addresses and PVA accounts and captcha killers. So, the end result is going to be even MORE spam. I watched eBay self-destruct about 3 years ago with the elimination of the 2-way feedback program. Today, I'm watching CL make a similar mistake. But again, they don't care. There's 30 employees worth billions of dollars... So, that's life. Too bad it hurts me and my family so bad.

That really sucks that one thing like that can have such a big effect on your biz. What do you sell?

They are WAY too aggressive in their anti-spam policing, and even as someone who doesn't use them personally in a business capacity I'm often in discussions with LEGIT vendors who don't violate any portion of their TOS as Joe mentions yet are penalized.

 

Turning that dial to "11" isn't going to make them a better, more exploit-free environment, if anything the policing software has the opposite effect of pissing off and pushing away those who use the system in a valid way.

 

Tough to talk about this without seeing their own numbers, they'd probably be shocking in terms of just how bad the threat is, which would be a valid defense, but there has got to be a better way than endless draconian policies that are akin to using body-destroying chemotherapy just to target a few cancer cells...

That really sucks that one thing like that can have such a big effect on your biz. What do you sell?

 

Mid and Small ticket "toys" like Jet Skiis, boats, exotic motorcycles, professional bicycles, sportbike motorcycles, PWCs some mid level exotics, ATVs, dirtbikes. Stuff like that. $5000 to $10,000 tickets.

 

 

I'd be ecstatic about paying for a subscription. Rug:Pulled.

 

Again, the problem is not the intention of the policy- it's that the Black Hatters have tens of thousands of IP addresses and PVA accounts and captcha killers. So, the end result is going to be even MORE spam. I watched eBay self-destruct about 3 years ago with the elimination of the 2-way feedback program. Today, I'm watching CL make a similar mistake. But again, they don't care. There's 30 employees worth billions of dollars... So, that's life. Too bad it hurts me and my family so bad.

 

it's very simple, you need to adapt and be a little bit smarter about IPs and other stuff it is not as complicated as you describe it

I just use Craig's List to buy coke and hookers... and the occasional used couch from IKEA.