Stop Getting Flagged
What dealers hate to see happen with their craigslist ads
Everyday we are contacted by car dealers who have tried to use craigslist to generate leads for their dealership, the most common problem that we hear is their ads are flagged and no longer show. Once the flagging starts it may be impossible to get your ads live again unless you take some proactive measures. Here is a list of quick tips:
- Stop allowing multiple dealership employees to post ads on craigslist. Craigslist looks at the IP address postings are coming from and if more than one account is created on your stores IP address then it looks like you are spamming their service.
With a client of our craigslist service we ran into a situation where all ads for two stores were flagged off craigslist. After several hours of trying to determine the reason why we discovered both stores shared the same IP address. Once determined the problem we were able to take corrective action and they now have 100% of their inventory live on craigslist.org
- Pull your identifiable information out of the text display – If your competition is aggressive in flagging your ads off you need to make adjustments to your ad templates so it will be harder for them to locate you ads in craigslist searches. You can do this by creating images that has your contact info, phone number and dealership name where human eyes can read it versus text.
- Don’t over post – Craigslist has terms of service in place that limits the number of cars that a dealership can post in one day. This limit is determined by your individual market area. If you go over this limit your ads will come down. One of the biggest mistakes dealers can make is trying to post all of their inventory each day on craigslist.
- Don’t use your inventory providers hosted images – If you use images hosted by your inventory provider then it establishes a footprint that is easy for craigslist and your flagging competitors to identify. While there is nothing wrong with using the images you already have you need to host them on a different domain name.
This quick list of tips to help curtail flagging of your ads at craigslist will help however it may not solve your problem completely. If you wish to know more about our service that works to help dealers get around flagging and keeping thier inventory live on craigslist visit our craigslist service page.
If you have any other suggestions, tips or questions leave them in the comments below.
The main reason car ads and dealer ads in particular get flagged is because misguided people insist on putting lots of unrelated keywords in them. You’ve seen it. 16 lines of gray text words at the bottom of the page, sometimes for avoiding the craigslist auto overpost prevention, and some to subvert the craigslist search.
If someone is looking for a ford explorer and they find all your toyotas because you have ford explorer in keywords, you will get flagged 25x as much as you would without those keywords.
Why? Those other people would never see your ads. So just forget the brilliant idea of putting unrelated keywords. Personally I don’t think it’s helpful putting *any* keywords in craigslist ads. People aren’t stupid. They know how to search and they recognize bogus results.
Avoid *being* the bogus results and you won’t be flagged.