Craigslist recently made a change that prevents us from doing things the way we did before. We immediately started working on fixes and alternatives though, and we now have a couple of good ones for you.
June 21 Update: Performance issues resolved
It appears that our joint efforts with 3taps have resolved the performance issues, so things are back to being pretty quick. (At least most of the time - let me know if you still experience significant slowdowns.) We hope to soon be able to expand the Separate Cities results beyond 7 days.
May 20something Update: Improvements
While there are still some performance issues, improvements have been made, so things generally work all the time now, but still do slowdown a bit during peak hours. Our data provider is still working hard on this and we expect all performance issues to be resolved soon. Once that's done, we should be able to extend results past one week for the Separate Cities mode.
We have also continued work on Direct Results, and now have some better checks and documentation for a couple issues people were running into. If you don't like the changes to Separate Cities and preferred the old way, please try the Direct Results tab. It's not identical to the old way, but it does give you results straight from craigslist, like before.
May 17 Update: Performance Issues
3taps (our new craigslist results provider) is having some difficulty handing all the traffic from SearchTempest. They are working on it and should be ramping up capacity over the coming days. In the meantime you may notice some timeouts, especially during peak hours from about 4-7pm pacific. The Separate Cities results may also fall back to Google if overloaded.
This should all be sorted out soon. In the meantime, you might want to try the other two results tabs (All Cities Together and Direct Results) instead, or try to do your searching outside those peak hours. Thanks for your patience!
May 16 Update: Two major improvements:
- We have switched the default 'Separate Cities' view over to a new provider (called 3taps) from the Google custom searches. This should provide much better results. While they're ramping up capacity, results for this mode will be limited to the past 7 days. (That's only temporary though!) If you need older results you will want to use the brand new Direct Results tab:
- We've created a brand new 'Direct Results' view, which you can get to with the Direct Results tab on the results page. Since we can no longer use frames, it will open the craigslist results in a new window with a little navigation window beside it. Only one city at a time, but you can flip through them quickly and the results come straight from craigslist so of course they are 100% complete.
Depending on the type of search you're doing you may find any one of the three results tabs (Separate Cities, All Cities Together, or Direct Results) works best for you. Why not try 'em all?
And of course, we're still working on improvements!
Original Announcement (outdated):
As you may have noticed, the default results mode (with separate cities) looks different today. Craigslist recently made a change at their end that prevents us from doing things the way we did before. As you can see though, we already have an alternative in place, and are working hard to make it good.
We are aware that the current setup, which uses google custom searches, is not yet perfect. We wanted to get it up for you as quickly as possible, since if you're anything like me you don't want to go without SearchTempest for long!
A few known issues:
- It's still fairly resource intensive, so slow on older or mobile browsers
- Price filters do not currently work
- There is a slight delay in showing brand new craigslist postings, and in removing deleted ones
- Image previews are not currently available
- The 'has picture' filter only works for craigslist images, not for embedded html images
- When sorting results by date, some are a bit out of order
Probably other minor ones I'm not remembering at the moment. Some of these issues are due to limitations of google searches, while some we just haven't had a chance to deal with yet. We are working tirelessly, both to add all the features we can with the current setup, and to investigate alternatives. One that looks promising is an API from 3taps.com. They don't currently have the capacity to handle all of SearchTempest's traffic, but we are hoping that can be changed.
Anyway, you should expect to see continual improvements over the coming days. Also, we figure we might as well look at this as an opportunity. Since we are no longer using frames, we will finally be able to add several often-requested features, including
- Removal of the 'double-scrolling' of the results page
- Ability to filter results by date
- Ability to search multiple categories at once
- A dedicated mobile site for smartphones, with iPhone and Android apps
Obviously we'll focus on the most critical stuff first, but we hope to get many of those done before long.
If you are having any problems with the site not mentioned above, please let us know by email, or by posting here!
Older updates:
May 14 Update: Exciting developments today. I spoke with the folks at 3taps and I think we're going to be able to get a much improved stacked results mode up very soon. Hopefully within a few days. Also, we are working on a new 'advanced view', which will allow direct viewing of craigs results, but much more quickly than the current 'direct craigslist view' mentioned above. Basically it will spawn a craigslist results window with a little navigation window beside it to quickly flip through cities. We're hard at work on that now and hope to have an early form of it ready within a day or two!
May 13 Update: Oh, and if you're really keen on getting results straight from craigslist, for now you could click on the Display Options tab in the results page, and switch to 'Direct craigslist view'. You can only view one city at a time that way, but at least you don't have to type the search in over and over. Again, we're working on improvements.
