Craigslist Ghosting - How to stop it.

Reader Comments

basically speaking C'sL SUCKS, not worth the time to try and get an ad posted, I just use eBay and that way I don't take the chance of being robbed or murder from making contact with someone on C'sL I agree this a very good post.

But even though I also met some of the problems listed here in general I like Craigslist and appreciate it is exist. I am not that angry with its management, even though it was quite frustrating not to get any replies to your requests or heeds for understanding of what at least their rules. I dot think there any stuff at all. that is why nobody gets any replies. I think somebody created this site to run mostly on its own. And they tried to created it as fare as possible, probably they just not able to make necessary adjustments. Ghosting (even it is sad when it applied to my posts) is pretty cool idea. Isn't it really irritating when you try to find some services and getting all pages of same company posts? Sad it not really working that well to clear those out.

Thank you. Amazing post. This site seems cool. I will share a few secrets about CL I have discovered. If you google raleigh boyz you will see we are the number one pain in the asses for CL R&R...We only mess with R&R boards because it is well known CL made this forum for the leftover rejects.

This is what I discovered was one of the best ways to beat ghosting...change your IP..if you have dynamic DSL you can change it by rebooting the modem. Some ISP have ways you can change it on the fly...use ccleaner to clean your cookies or Fox has an easy to use tool for cleaning your history..CL is sneaky and will install things on your PC.. Beware the name Kelvin Bruce ( supposedly relocating with his mother from Ireland )
Do not reply to anything with this name attached unless you can verify the identity of this individual. I almost got taken for $2500.00. Thanks for bringing this info to our attention. There are tons of scammers on Craigslist and anyone who brings that info here is doing the entire web community a service. I would encourage anyone who runs into a scammer to identify them publicly. Part of dealing with Craigslist is dealing with the crooks and scammers. Once they are outed, they loose their power to do harm. Post his URLs on raleigh R&R and we will flag him to hell. I live in Canada Can anybody tell me how to get around geo tracking? The advanced video tutorial listed on my site explains how to deal with geo-tracking. The issue I have is...with my company I am advertising globally for extra assistants. So, that means..advertising in different states. Now, what is the point of advertising on Craigslist,when you can't advertise in different states? Spamming is one thing, but running a company that is expanding its need for assistants/extra help/interns is another situation. Craigslist way of doing things is damaging to small businesses who may be hiring in the near future and want to expand which means advertising in different states instead of just one state. VPN! That is exactly right. When all else fails, VPN (virtual private networks, also called VPS for virtual private servers) are what will work. I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate your time and effort you take to do your best to help us with our issues on ghosting, flagging, etc. on craigslist. Keep up your awesome work for we know that "craigslist" is like a cancer that we just have to keep finding some kind of "cure" for. I applaud your work. :) Thank you for your kind words. ;) I think one very important factor that everyone forgets ( or doesnt even realize), is that Ebay bought 25% of Craigslist in 2004. Now Craigslist practices seem to be just as shady and dictatorial as Ebay has become. I tried most of those solutions listed above and it didn't work. I work for a car dealer and have been posting ads on Craigslist for some time now and for some reason a bulk of them are showing in the city I am in, and the other cities I post on about 1 or 2 ads will show up out of every ten posts.. Some cities absolutely 0 will show up. But for some reason, on Dec.31st all of the ads I posted show in all of the cities... It looks like there was some sort of update on New Years on the system. Is anyone else having this issue? My boss is getting upset and it isn't like I can take a craigslist class or something. Please help me, I've even e-mailed the help@craigslist.org address and have recieved no reply. You have to keep things in perspective. This blog was never meant to be the final solution to every problem with Craigslist. This blog is a starter course that identifies and clarifies the problems for the people that may not know why they are experiencing problems. At my website, which I have the liberty to update much more frequently, I go into greater detail. I also have two video courses which explain much more about posting and beating the Craigslist filters. There is the beginner course and the advanced course. I would suggest that you posting for a car dealership would need the advanced course. It should resolve all your problems and it is free to view. I make all my material available for free unlike other sites that charge as much as $50 per video. On my website there are approximately 25 videos and growing, so at $50 X 25 you are saving $1250. There are changes being made at Craigslist all the time, and I stay on top of it and pass the info along to the followers of my website as soon as I get the info and solution. I work for a car dealer as well. We have several stores in several cities with a few different names. I've tried it all. i can assure you that nobody is sitting at CL checking which ads go up and which don't. I'm having all the same problems as you. I've experimented with one car they don't let me post. It's a 2003 Mini Copper S. No matter what I do CL ghosts it. I changed the title to "car for sale" and it wasn't ghosted. Then as the ad was still running, I changed the title back to 2003 Mini Cooper S and it was ghosted again. I am going to try to have someone else post a few of my ads and see what happens in another location and with completely different info. first off your not allowed to post in multiple cities or areas. your getting ghosted for break c.l. rules. post only in your own location and your should be ok. remember cities outside your own which your trying to break into need business too. your selfishly trying to steal their share. treat others the way you want to be treated, with respect and fairness. That's ridiculous! You have businesses who are posting ads that need to be for different states, even global. We live in a global society, and small businesses are expanding their reach globally. What you are suggesting goes against small business who may be hiring in multiple locations (cities and states)..or maybe you don't believe in bringing more jobs to more states in the U.S. Chrissy: Or maybe you should try another site, and pay for your advertising. Get a grip...and perhaps learn logical thinking. Ack! Ack! craigslist doesn't believe in jobs because I can't use the site the way I want to! lol Thanks so very much for sharing this information. You're very welcome. Do you believe if i said i posted some ads ads from a Non US IP ? Sure, I'd believe it. this sight is not as large as criags lits due to the fact that noone knows it. so if we spread the word it will rapidly become the "new craigsl list" http://boston.backpage.com/ use this sight! power to the people! :) Actually Backpage has been around for almost as long as Craigslist has, and it has similar problems as Craigslist. I have used both and the flagging and spamming is just as bad but without the payback. In other words not enough people respond to ads on BP so I don't really bother with it any more. If it works for you, then I say, use it to the max. I have been putting up with Craigs crap way too long. The site does not even rank anymore in the search engines. Even BP is deleting my ads, I am going after long term free search engine traffic and find that the ads I place on ClassifiedsEarth are usually at the top of page one on all 3 major search engines. CL used to be cool but not anymore. I agree. I have mentioned before that I also think Craigslist is way over rated and their numbers are going down, and will continue a downward spiral. I would say 10 years from now, Craigslist will be another "Whatever happened to" story of the internet. This answer all my ?? Help on craigslist only would say the link is needed not one person would answer the question what's ghosting or tell me if it,was fixable. They were a WASTE OF TIME THANKS FOR SHARING INFO CL Help is useless I agree. I'll go one step farther and point out what I have found out also is that Flaggers on CL will target anyone who asks for help. That is another free tip I'll give you folks. NEVER ask for help on the CL forums UNLESS you want to be targeted for Flagging. Good point! I went to the forum but after reading all the useless "help" there I decided not to post a question. I found out by trial an error if you have for example a URL in your ad they ghost you if you have photos linking to a website they will ghost you. Sometimes if you don't have an address or City in the headlines they ghost you. the best bet is to use photobucket and use the html that is giving on photo bucket to post your ads. With photobucket you can post all day long jut MAKE SURE YOU CHANGE THE HEADLINES.

I'm still trying to figure out what else they ghost you for but doing the above has been working for me until they have a new program they start to implement . You are on the right track with what you have found out so far. Let me save you a lot of time and frustration. Download my free video tutorial at my website which will explain what you already found, and more. There are lots of little tricks that can make your life easier when posting at CL. I've been trying to post a house for rent recently, initially the ad was ghosted. I then tried different emails, different computers, also altering the content. Eventually I figured out that whenever I was asked for a phone validation, the ad was ghosted. And the content is what is triggering the ghosting. I still haven't figured out which words they don't like, but I know it's something that I wouldn't suspect. Can't craigslist be more straightforward and just tell me they don't like my ad and the reason? Craiglist nonsense. Last summer I was "ghosted" for the first time in years on Craigslist and I took me four months to get back on again. It basically wiped my business out for last year. And now all of a sudden for no apparent reason, I am "ghosted"again. What does not make sense to me is why there can be people posting multiple ads in multiple cities, multiple times per day and be doing it every day that I have been observing this and they just keep going on and on. Meanwhile, I play by the ridiculous Craigslist rules and I get ghosted for no reason. Last summer I changed my business name, my ISP, my IP, my cell phone number and my email address and still all my ad attempts were being ghosted. Then I realized that Craigslist must be detecting my house hardline phone number that I was running my computer on. Finally, I used my girlfriend's computer and cell phone and I got my ad back on Craigslist. Now all of a sudden even that ad is being ghosted. It is almost like Craigslist has gone over to the "dark side" and is in league with spammers and scammers. I know exactly what you mean! That is the frustration a lot of people feel on a daily basis in dealing with Craigslist. I'm glad to see you were proactive and did a lot of the right things to start posting again. There may be a few things you may have missed. I have a new video tutorial for posting on Craigslist at my website. It's totally free for everyone to use. Go download that for free and hopefully you can increase your posting power. I've recently tried to post an job ad for a company I'm affiliated with and suddenly got ghosted out. Very disappointing! Are there any other free classfied ads besides Craplist and Backpage? There are hundreds of sites (too many for me to list), unfortunately they get a lot less traffic than Craigslist and Backpage. Do a web search and you will get hundreds of listings. I have searched most of those sites and didn't bother since some have one ad posted per section. Some have sections that are totally empty. These sites obviously gets way too little traffic. I started using Craigs List this month to post a job ad that is for my company that has been around 20 years. I have been posting in many markets but in the last few days, most of my entries are being ghosted. There seems to be no rhyme or reason why the odd one goes through, the only thing I have been changing in the body of my ad is the locale. What causes this? And why does the odd one go through? You are correct, there is no rhyme or reason to why this happens. I actually find Craigslist to be getting more and more chaotic as time goes by. You hit on a very good point though. "Some" of your ads are getting ghosted but some are getting through. The ads that the scammers or spammers are posting work the same way. They play the numbers game, that's how they win. If you post 100 ads and 20 get through, then you consider that a WIN! For you it's frustrating to have to deal with this hassle, but not for them. You can visit my site and get more information that will hopefully help you, but don't give up. This is a constantly changing and evolving dynamic and you have to change your attacks to match the game. I have three rooms for rent, I clearly wrote out the ads in word and got everything prepared for three nice posts. I post them from a verified account and I keep attempting to find the ads to no avail. I'm thinking it's some sort of bug as I tried it again the next day with the same results. I E-mail Craigslist support, who never answered. I then found out about this "ghosting" crap where they tell you it's posted but it actually isn't.

Unbelievable that Craigslist would use such a messed up passive-aggressive tactic which confuses and hurts normal users.

So how do I post my ad for the rooms for rent in my house when I've already used my phone number for verification and have the account under my E-mail address? I'm going to have to hide my IP, use a fake free E-mail and pay for a "disposable phone number" service just to post on the stupid site. I can understand your frustration. That is why I started doing these blogs, to help honest hard working people like you, just trying to do an honest advertisement. You don't have to give up or spend a lot of money. You will have to be creative and put a little effort into it. Since writing this blog I have added much more information to my database, but I keep that safely at my main website. The reason I do this is that I don't want Craigslist to know everything I know. Visit my site, and in the members area I have a huge list of free virtual phone numbers, free proxies, and more. Everything that I list at my site is free to use. I know a lot of my readers are small business people or private citizens with limited funds so I only hunt down the free stuff. Hopefully some of those services will help you post successfully at no cost to you. CL R&R is the biggest losers playground I have ever seen. I am part of the biggest flagging club ever to take on CL and we wipe out whole R&R boards daily. I was ghosted in a section that I have never posted in, and there is no possible way the content of my post tripped any kind of spam flag. Screw Craigslist, what a joke! I know of a person that is paying other people to post trucking jobs on Craigslist for him! There are 100's of posting in many different states and more than one running in each state. This is against TOU rules. How many times can you spam a post? This person is a scammer for sure. Anyway to bring him down to the rules? Thank you !! Happy Holiday to you and yours! Hi Barbara, yes, there are many people out there that are scammers and spammers. There are a couple of things you can do to make life more difficult for people like this. 1-you can report or flag his posts everywhere you see them. This may or may not make any difference, but you can try it. 2- you can make a post of your own identifying this person as a spammer. Many times people will put a post on Craigslist that has nothing to do with selling anything, but will instead point out that others should avoid a certain seller or scam that is going around. You can also give this a try. In the Craigslist universe, self-help is the only thing that will make any difference. The CL staff is totally uninterested in user problems. Happy Holidays to you also. I do have a question. I posted an ad yesterday and it showed up and i started to get replies and everything. This only last for about and hour or so, then the replies stopped and when i checked on CL the ad was gone..but i got no email saying it was it as flagged...why would it allow the ad then all of a sudden "ghost" it? Like a delayed ghost?
BTW i posted to ads in 2 different categories...the other ad is still up and working just fine. What gives?? Both posted from same PC too. That is interesting. If it was ghosted you would still have your email link pointing to the ad as if it was active, but in would not show up in the searches. Look at your email link and see if that still shows as active, (which would indicate ghosting), or look in your Craigslist account and see if it shows up as flagged or any other description. I would guess it was probably flagged by the staff in which case you would get no email. It was probably seen as a double post. Consider yourself lucky that they didn't take down ALL your posts since that is the way they usually to behave. I would say to be more careful next time and follow some of the techniques I explain here and at my site. Ok, wow I wondered why I haven't been able to see my ad for quite a while now. Occasionally I will get a confirmation email, but when I do the "repost" thing, I don't get one. Nor can I find my ad! strange, I follow the darned rules too :( oh well, maybe Kijiji is a better site, although it's a poor second cousin here in western Canada. I know what you mean Mac, but I wouldn't give up if I were you. If you are a casual poster at Craigslist it may not be worth your time and trouble, but if you make money from your ads, don't give up so easily. Go to my website where I have a huge list of suggestions you can follow for making better posts on Craigslist. That's what I'm here for, is to help people like you be able to use Craigslist successfully. I've had this problem there and one of the suggestions I came across in their Help Forum was to not copy from a Word file. If you just write the ad in the Craigslist box this wouldn't be an issue. But if you write the ad beforehand - as I usually do, to save time and make sure it's right so I can just copy and paste it - then where you wrote it apparently can make a big difference. I guess Word puts a bunch of code in with the text that screws up Craigslist's system. Using a plain text editor like Notepad is supposed to work better because then there's no code being copied along with the text. But as you said, CL is kind of arbitrary in what it does and doesn't let through, so who knows? I guess it's worth a try, though.

I have a couple of other suggestions - always check your ads after you post them. Don't use the link CL gives you; instead, actually go out and do a search for the title or something in your ad. Don't do this right away; it does take time for the ads to show up. But if you can't find your ad after a couple of hours it's probably been ghosted. (I never used to do this; I always trusted that if they told me it was posted, it was. Now I do it every time.)

And if you do get an ad ghosted, don't bother trying to renew it; it will renew that way. (Guess how I found this out.) The only way I know to deal with ghosted ads is to delete them, wait a few days, and try again.

(What really bugs me about this is, the scam and spam ads with all their HTML manage to get through when the plainer legitimate ads don't. Go figure...) Thanks for the very detailed comment. I can tell you from experience that using notepad is helpful but wont completely eliminate the chance of ghosting. I have always used notepad and still got ghosted. I also tried to reduce the amount of text in the ad by writing a small amount of text manually, then putting the rest of my ad in an image file that would follow the text. That way to the untrained eye it all looked like text but the ad itself would look small to Craigslist. It also allowed me the ability to make my ads start off as being more random with the remaining text being what I needed to say. Worked for a while and then got ghosted after that. Craigslist is very arbitrary indeed. The key is just to keep plugging away and changing what you do. When you get ghosted, move on to the next idea. i dont post or even look in the ads anymore. i sometimes go to troll the forums and make fun of the ones that wear craigs cult robe and worship their god but that is all its useful for anymore Craigslist has become a nest of ideological Nazi's on the political boards as well. Surely they had the techonogy to do this before, why NOW? Yes, I'm being Ghosted and it makes no sense ... Why would they tie up space and bandwidth? Not to mention, the bevy of people who are getting away with spamming the site ...Craigslist sucks, period. Craigslist's rules are way too ambiguous (when they're stated at all) for anyone to be able to follow them. The best way to avoid getting ghosted on Craigslist is to post your ad somewhere else - like eBay Classifieds. That's a very good point, and statistics have shown that Craigslist is loosing hits. You would think during this recession more people would be visiting Craigslist to find good deals on the stuff they want to buy, but they are actually going elsewhere. Craigslist's traffic has seen a consistent decline since 2007. Sounds like a business opportunity for someone to develop a NEW listing site stay away from ebay. you will get in trouble and then your ebay selling account will be taken away as well are you paypal. never use or depend on sites that charge you money and kick you around (ebay). better to get your own site than to rely on them. ebay dose not want small sellers anymore. competing with c.l. is really a formula for driving those classified shoppers to ebay. c.l. owners did execute a mandates that keep ebay on a short leash, ebay who was trying to get controlling shares probably so they could either charge for classifieds, advert. spam c.l., or use as a vehicle to get more traffic to ebay where they plan on selling mostly new stuff (like amazon). they are making deals with the big boys like nike, chanel, ralph lauren, etc to sell directly on ebay instead in conjunction with stores. again trying to get more of the pie. There is currently federal legislation pending (with unanimous support in the House) which would require ID for anyone posting in the services section. I say extend that to everything and stop ghosting- don't punish good people for YOUR inability to manage your site.