Craigslist flagged all my ad's..

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swaptrex

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[FONT=&quot]I've been posting on CL for roughly 1.5 years, and have acquired almost half of my customers using this method. I post 6 ad's per day (because people spam and the ad's get buried quickly), spread out throughout the day. Between two accounts I had roughly 160 ad's that I use to renew daily, which took months. One morning this week I woke up to renew an ad, and all my ad's were flagged. Now, when I create new ad's, one account they get flagged immediately, the other account, sometimes they stick sometimes they don't. Has anyone experienced this? Thanks in advance.[/FONT]
 
It was probably your competition flagging them.
 
JeffM said:
It was probably your competition flagging them.
Click to expand...

That's a good assumption, however, after posting for over a year I can tell if someone is flagging my ad's. Reason being, craigslist uses an algorithm (which they don't let out any info), so a competitor has to usually flag your ad more than it's been viewed. So I have a hard time believing someone could delete every single ad.
 
Your technically only supposed to post once per couple day. So you are now considered a spammer. Most likely another detailer has noticed this and decided to flag you. Then when Craigslist viewed your ads it found out what you were doing. You may need to cut back to once a day or couple days for awhile.
 
I bet you are posting too much specially the same ad type
 
I wish I could help you but I have very limited experience using Craig's list. On the other hand I have a few questions for you.

- You say that half your customers come from Craig's list. What kind of packages are you advertising and at what price?

- Do you get a lot of problem customers who want the world for a penny, or are never satisfied with the work being done?

- How many customers are you getting from Craig's List per week on average?

I have stayed away from CL in fear of getting the type of customers I don't want. But since you seems to be doing well with that platform, I would love to ear about your experience.
 
upon3 said:
Six of the same ad per day? You're a spammer.
Click to expand...

:spam4:

That was my first thought too, but have you ever looked at the "Services" section. It's nothing but people/businesses bombarding the heck out of it the same way. It's kinda the "if you can't beat em, going em" thing or just get buried.

I tried it a little and agree that the customers acquired aren't worth the annoyance.
 
If everyone else is doing it, it doesn't make it right.

CraigsList is essentially user-policed, so more than a few people flagged your post. I had it happen to one of my posts when I was selling my GTI a couple of years ago. I couldn't figure out why, then found that multiple people were flagging the ad because they thought it should have been a paid advertisement (apparently, if you can string words together into articulate sentences, people think you are a dealer).

I would be flagging the other ads as well, if CL is where you want to be promoting your business. If others are abusing the system, the playing field needs to be leveled.
 
You brooked the rules when posting on Craigslist. So all of your ads removed from their server.
 
Stay away from it.Those people. Are price shoppers not value minded individuals.
 
Craigslist doesn't have a lot of rules but you seem to have violated their guidelines. First, their Terms of Service are very loose but they do say that by posting on CL you agree to, among other things, their terms of moderation. Here is a bit of that section:

"MODERATION. You agree we may moderate CL access and use in our sole discretion, e.g. by blocking (e.g. IP addresses), filtering, deletion, delay, omission, verification, and/or access/account/license termination."

Next, CL outlines their guidelines in their FAQ ( https://www.craigslist.org/about/help/faq ) . The section that applies to you is as follows:

"How often can I post?
You may post to one category and in one city, no more than once every 48 hours. If you try to post something similar to an active post of yours on the site, you may get a blocked message. Removing the similar active post should help, unless it is less than 48 hours old."

Six ads per day clearly violates this and opens you to action on their part.

Now for some opinion. The user policing of CL appears to be fairly fickle. I recently read and article written by a business owner in New York about her experience with CL policing.
Craig?s List?s Dirty Little Secret: Who?s Policing the Flagging Police?

If you don't want to read the entire piece, here's the section you should pay attention to:
"... I discovered that Craig’s List has been taken over by a handful of self-appointed police who flag ads arbitrarily. Anyone can get an ad deleted on Craig’s List by flagging it a couple of times from different ip addresses (say, work and home). There is no recourse, no higher authority to appeal to. Your ad is gone and, aside from a curt email notification, that’s the end of it. Try re-posting, and you’re likely to get deleted again, except now that you’ve been flagged once, you’re penalized: one flag is enough to immediately delete your ad."

Just to check out what the author said, I looked over the the CL Flag Help Forum where folks that get flagged can ask why. Most of the flagged ads were for valid reasons and one of the most frequent reasons was violation of the 48 hour reposting rule. But it wasn't tough to find arbitrary censorship. For example, an ad for IT consulting services was flagged and when the poster asked why the first response was, "Blowhard ad. Put me on the list when the rest of your book is published" Yeah, the original post was a bit excessive but when exactly did the poster cross the line such that their ad would be flagged?

Here's an unofficial piece of advice that may or may not still work. A friend who posted her services frequently on CL said that 2 or 3 times through the day, she would go into the ad and change something minor like adding or deleting a period, space, or comma. That small edit would pop the ad to the top of the list.

Your mileage may vary,

Bill
 
i have nothing of value to add. But I just want to say congrats that you are pulling that many customers from Craigslist.
 
I know you are just trying to get some work.But,the robots and Algorithms in San Francisco look at you as a spammer.If your ads are staying up for hours or days its your competition flagging you.If your ads never go live or go down after a few min. its the robots and Algorithms.Pull back for several days or a week.Re-write all your ads and only put one or two every 48 hours....Good luck to you
 
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