09/2011 Update: Craigslist seems to change their booleans every now and then. Parenthesis and apostrophes at one point were for phrases and OR operators.
Just like the renowned Google search engine, Craigslist.org has their own technical search term operators that will alter the parameters of your search. If you are looking to add special conditions such as customizing your neighborhoods when looking for an apartment near downtown Tucson and historic districts, you could easily enter in the following into the native search bar on craigslist:
"iron horse"|"armory park"|"el encanto"|"feldmans"|"feldman's"|"Rincon Heights"|"Arizona Inn"|"Colonia Solana"|"Fourth Avenue"|"Sixth Avenue"|"6th Ave"|"4th Ave"|"west University"
If the above code doesn’t make too much sense, so I can break it down for you. The search looks at 15 distinct searches with single words, or multiple words in consecutive order.
You can make your own custom searches in Craigslist by following their rules for Boolean keys:
"entire phrase"
Anything in parentheses is treated as an exact phrase.
grey|gray
Vertical pipes act as an “OR” as shown in spelling the ambiguous color. This comes in handy if you want to search for multiple items at once. It can save you plenty of time.
"new york|jersey"
This one uses both previous search methods and displays results from both “New York” and “New Jersey”
Macbook Air -11
Preceding a search term with a hyphen or dash will remove any search results that contain the word. In this case, any 11″ Apple computers would be omitted. This would allow you to find all other sized MacBook Air laptops and only omit “11.”
-"do not include phrase"
This one above shows that you could NOT INCLUDE an entire phrase as well.
The possibilities are practically endless. Let the search be your guide. And let craigslisters continue to buy used goods and services efficiently.
4 comments
Shahryar says:
Aug 5, 2010
Sorry if this is covered but I missed it but what about a search where I wanted one word for sure but then one or the other word? I’m looking for an iphone 3gs on craigslist that either has “warranty” or “receipt” in the listing. Seems I would just do:
(iphone 3gs warranty) | (iphone 3gs receipt)
?
Hari says:
Oct 4, 2010
Thanks for telling us about the OR operator, didn’t know about it. However, I would like to correct that the words included in parenthesis don’t seem to be treated as an exact phrase. E.g., I was looking for a used honda insight and the search query (without the outer quotes): “(“2000 honda insight”) | (“2001 honda insight”) | (“2002 honda insight”)” returns exactly what I want (and no more) where as without quotes, the search query (without the quotes): “(2000 honda insight) | (2001 honda insight) | (2002 honda insight)” returns too much clearly indicating that those words are not treated as phrases. So, it seems like you do have to use quotes and it works when used in parenthesis.
Jason says:
May 13, 2011
How do you force removal of a phrase such as “class a”? For example, try the following: motorhome -”class a” OR motorhome -(class a) OR motorhome -(“class a”) OR motorhome -”class%20a” OR motorhome -class%20a
None of them work!
rob says:
Feb 2, 2012
I am irritated by the never ending list of cars and furniture add by dealers. How do I look for a list of everything in my area, with furniture and cars excluded?