Power Searching Craigslist Using Boolean Operators

Craigslist is an invaluable tool when you want to buy or sell stuff. However it can be difficult trying to find what you want at times because the search box is a bit too simplistic.

If you use Boolean operators, you’ll find Craigslist is much easier to search.

The three operators that will serve you best are the pipe, double-plus and minus. The pipe (|) means “OR”, the double-plus (++) means “AND”, the minus (-) means “BUT NOT” (or “AND NOT”).

Example: You go to a local Craigslist, such as tampa.craigslist.org. Then you go to the cars+trucks section for that region. From here, let’s say you wanted to find nothing but listings for a Chevrolet Corvette from years 1995 to 2000 with a manual transmission, excluding convertible models.

How you do that is by typing this in the search field:

1995|1996|1997|1998|1999|2000++corvette++manual -convertible

Translated literally, the above means:

1995 OR 1996 OR 1997 OR 1998 OR 1999 OR 2000 AND corvette AND manual BUT NOT convertible

It is required that in order to use these operators, you must use the pipe and/or double-plus and/or minus. If you try to literally use the words AND or OR or BUT, Craigslist will spit back an error at you. Pipes, double-pluses and minuses must be used to make these operators work like they should.

It is suggested that you use any “BUT NOT” operator at the end of a search term, because they must be preceded by a space. “OR” and “AND” terms can be next to each other without spaces, but “BUT NOT” operators cannot.

Another example:

You want to search for cars 1994 through 1996 that are all Buicks except the models of Skylark and Riviera.

1994|1995|1996++buick -skylark -riviera

Note that the minus operators are at the end and each preceded by a space to ensure the search goes through correctly.

Literally translated:

1994 OR 1995 OR 1996 AND buick BUT NOT skylark BUT NOT riviera

This search shows all Buick cars from 1994 through 1996 except the Skylark and Riviera models.

It’s a bit confusing at first to use Boolean operators, but once you get the hang of it you’ll always use them on Craigslist.