Scraping Craigslist Ads’ Data
Ranked as the most popular website in the classified segment, Craigslist is an infinite source of qualified leads. From houses to cars, from jobs to home supplies, Craigslist has an ad for everything you may be looking for. If you’re in search of a fantastic tool to extract valuable information from Craigslist ads, PhoneBot has exactly what you need. Scraping data from this website can help you build a list of relevant leads for your mass messaging campaign.
Launched in 1995, Craigslist is present in over 70 countries. It is translated in 13 languages and houses more than 80 billion ads per month. Statistics place Craigslist as the 67th most popular website in the world, with around 300 million monthly visits. If you’re looking for business leads to produce revenue, scraping information from Craigslist is a must in your marketing campaign. Moreover, you can access data about any product or service linked to yours, and about the people interested in them. That’s not all, extracting information from Craigslist can help you monitor your potential competitors. Information is definitely power!
This tutorial will explain how to use PhoneBot to scrape relevant data from Craigslists ads.
1. Prepare a List of Keywords, Categories and Cities
First of all, you need to set your targets. In others words, the ads you want to extract the information from. You won’t need to provide ads’ URLs, as it would be too long and ineffective. All you need to do is pick some keywords related to your niche, the categories in which you want to look for those keywords, and establish a geographical space or, put in simple words, a city (not country).
Create a Google spreadsheet. In the first column type in your keywords. In the second column write the categories (you can enter as many categories as you want for each keyword). The third column will contain the cities. The image below can help you get on the right track.
Keep this document close to you, as you will need it to configure PhoneBot.
2. Configure Your PhoneBot to Scrape Information of Craigslist Ads
2.1 Download and Install PhoneBot on Your Computer
If you haven’t installed PhoneBot yet, you can test it for free. There is a guide that explains step by step how to install it and a video knowledge base that describes the process from scratch. Our community forum, the live chat is at your disposal to help you whenever necessary. You can also contact us by WhatsApp or phone at +33767371715, or by email at support@phonebot.co.
2.2 Configure the “Scrape Craigslist Ads’ Information” Task on PhoneBot
Once you have downloaded, installed and correctly activated the PhoneBot software on your computer, you need to create a campaign and configure the desired task.
- On the PhoneBot dashboard, create a campaign and name it.
You can pick any name you want. Remember that a campaign is composed of one or several tasks.
- Then choose the desired task. In this case, select “Craigslist Ads” under Scraping.
Another way to access the task is by using the left menu. There you will find all the tasks sorted by categories and platforms.
Make sure to choose the right task. If you accidentally click on the wrong one, you can unselect it at any time.
THE TARGETS
Provide PhoneBot the Google spreadsheet containing the list of keywords, categories and cities. We have previously seen how prepare this document. All you need to do is copy and paste the URL of your spreadsheet in the corresponding field.
ENABLE TASK AND CAMPAIGN
Once you’ve pasted the Google spreadsheet URL, do not forget to save your configuration and enable your task.
Then, enable your campaign on the Campaigns page.
EXPORT DATA
The scraped data can be downloaded as a CSV (comma-separated value) file once the task has been executed.
For further details on data exporting, keep on reading.
3. Run PhoneBot to Scrape Information of Craigslist Ads
To execute the campaigns, you need to use the PhoneBot software already installed on your Computer.
You can run your tasks from any of the first two tabs of the PhoneBot software (see image below). The first tab enables you to execute your whole campaign, which is to say, all the tasks configured in a particular campaign; whereas the second tab allows you to execute one specific task from a campaign. Make sure to choose the right campaign and the desired device. Then just click on “Run”.
For further and more detailed information on the campaign and task execution, please refer to this detailed tutorial.
4. Export Your Results
Once the task has been executed, you can retrieve all the information of the members of your targeted LinkedIn groups. To do so, just go to the Campaigns page on your dashboard and click on “See results” for the particular campaign.
You will land on a page where the results are sorted by categories (Cold Messaging, Influencers, Scraping, Authority, Freelancer) and tasks. Look for the right category (Scraping) and task (Craigslist Ads). Then just click on CSV to download your file.
You can also export your results from the PhoneBot software. To do so, just launch PhoneBot and click on the “See Report/Synchronize” button, below the Run section.
This will open on your browser the results page displayed above. Look for the category and the task, and click on CSV.
Conclusion
Extracting data from Craigslist ads can help your company identify potential leads and build a market. Make of PhoneBot your main ally in your rapid growth project.