Ok it looks like after suing that poor dude, they added a map to the apartment listings finally. I stand corrected on that one. It was missing forever.
I still don't see anywhere to search across regions. If you've ever tried to find a hard to find car you'd understand what I mean there. I'd like to search in, say, all of California. Can't do it.
My point is that there's a lot that could be done that will not be done because they won't let people scrape even if they link back. So, for example, say I wanted to add a state-wide search. Even if all my search results pointed back to CL, CL would cease and desist me. This goes for other enhanced functionality as well. This is all legal, but see it for what it is: an aggressive use of their position to retain their position, which includes squelching any and all uses of their data. It's an anit-competitive move that let's them maintain what, in my opinion, is a very poor quality product for all the traffic and data they get.
At least in the UK version, they do have some kind of cross-region search now in the sidebar. (Which is pretty much essential here, because their region boundaries don't make much sense and people don't always agree on what region they're in.)
"Nearby listings" doesn't work like I'd like it to. It'd be great to be able to choose from multiple craigslist areas and run searches on them, distinct of their proximity.
I still don't see anywhere to search across regions. If you've ever tried to find a hard to find car you'd understand what I mean there. I'd like to search in, say, all of California. Can't do it.
My point is that there's a lot that could be done that will not be done because they won't let people scrape even if they link back. So, for example, say I wanted to add a state-wide search. Even if all my search results pointed back to CL, CL would cease and desist me. This goes for other enhanced functionality as well. This is all legal, but see it for what it is: an aggressive use of their position to retain their position, which includes squelching any and all uses of their data. It's an anit-competitive move that let's them maintain what, in my opinion, is a very poor quality product for all the traffic and data they get.