97 of Top 100 Classified Sites Are Craigslist

According to a recent report, 97 of the top 100 classified sites are just localized versions of Craigslist, up from 88 just last year. Combine that with a massive rise in traffic to classified sites in general and you have a recipe for one raging behemoth. "Craigslist isn't just crushing the newspaper industry and crowding out other classified sites. It's also taking an increasing slice of total U.S Internet traffic: the site's market share in February was up 90% year over year, accounting for about 2.5% of total US Web site visits."

Comments

Classifieds Traffic Up Since Recession

[eldavojohn]

The article correctly noted that craigslist's staggering success is not the real story here. Craigslist has been growing quite nicely for sometime. Also, it is not Craigslist that has grown drastically but Craigslist Cities custom category's number of visits went up 90% between Feb '08 and Feb '09 and all other classifieds grew 22 percent. Craigslist cities is below all other classifieds in the graph on their blog which contradicts what the article is saying. So that 90% figure is a bit misleading and I think it is a particular custom division of Craigslist.

The news is that they think the recession is causing this thrift explosion. From the article:

So it seems the recession is more or less rescuing some classifieds sites while acting as a rocket booster for Craigslist. This meshes well with last week's info about Craigslist replacing MySpace as the top U.S. search term.

And from Hitwise's blog:

Market share of US Internet Visits increased 90% to the Craigslist Cities custom category year over year in February 2009 while visits to All Other Classifieds grew 22%.Visits to All Other Classifieds had been declining for most of 2008 with visits starting to increase in January and February. This suggests that the worsening US economy may be boosting visits to classifieds websites, and contributing to the recent up tick in visits to both Craigslist Cities and All Other Classifieds.

I'm not sold on their evidence. I don't see a huge jump since February of '08 in search popularity. Why do we do this with percentages? We break them down into categories and play the telephone game to distort them for the sole purpose of shock-and-awe reporting leading to ad revenue?

Re:Classifieds Traffic Up Since Recession

[Zakabog]

Did anyone else notice the largest drop on that graph occurred right after this article -

Craigslist to crack down on prostitution ads

Re:In other news:

[linzeal]

Yeah and this is the problem as I see it.

Craigslist made the economics of prostitution more decentralized so cops were busting fewer hookers even though the sex industry in a lot of towns was thriving with Craigslist. So the cops started to take notice when their revenue dropped off. In some towns over 50% of the revenue comes from fines levied against the citizens for non-violent crimes and anything that disrupts that will make politicians poke their local county sheriffs and police departments to do something about it. Look at your county coffers and see how much comes in from traffic tickets and criminal fines for my county it is nearly 30% of the revenue. Making so much of county and city budgets dependent on vice and traffic crimes has made it profitable to exacerbate problems that will encourage it while not directly encouraging it. -- See drug war, cheap alcohol and 1 second yellow lights.

We also had a massive decrease in violence against prostitutes and charges filed for pimping because craigslist made it far easier to go solo and be safe from crazies by filtering out them by email and phone before meeting. Sort of like speed dating, now these women are back out working for pimps and working the streets. This sort of action by the police community against sex workers is abhorrent and is bringing back old problems that were going away with Craigslist being used by escorts.