Track Craigslist ads – Support center – ClickMeter
Tracking Craigslist ads (posts) is quick and easy using ClickMeter. You can monitor views (impressions), clicks and conversions of your Craigslist listings. With ClickMeter, you can easily monitor all your ads from one place, understand which ad is working and why. All data is collected and available in real time.
How to track views on your Craigslist ads (tracking pixels):
Create a new tracking pixel. (How to create a tracking pixel – video)
While creating the post in Craigslist, embed the tracking pixel code (small code) at the end of the posting description area.
Publish the post and wait for users to visit your ad.
As you can see in the following screenshot, the tracking pixel is not visible to the end-user, it’s just embedded in the code.
When a user visits your post on Craigslist, information about him/her will be tracked and stored in your ClickMeter account. Reports will include details such as unique or non-unique visitor, country of origin, IP address, time of visit, referral, browser information and much more.
How to track clicks from your Craigslist ads (tracking links):
Now that you placed a tracking pixel in your ads you will know in real-time who is reading them. At this point, you may want to know who is clicking on them and reaching your landing pages. This is even easier using ClickMeter:
Create a new tracking link (watch the video).
Use this tracking link in your ads instead of the original link to your landing page.
All done, simply wait for your customers.
The formula: clicks/views is the CTR (click through rate) percentage and will inform you about the propensity of who read and clicked your ads. This tells you how good your ads are and if they prompt visitors to click them.
Advanced redirect:Using ClickMeter you can optimize your conversion process with our advanced redirect features. For example you can cloak your links or redirect mobile users to another website.
Important note: Craigslist does not like URL shorteners and redirects. They can not easily check destination URLs and assure ad quality, in fact if you are using a URL-shortener, the landing page address can easily be changed. That’s why the Craigslist team sometimes blacklists URL-shortener domains. The most popular URL-shortening services are blacklisted! To prevent our domain from being blacklisted we are in contact with their team and we constantly check their lists. ClickMeter has a strict anti-spam policy and all unwanted and suspicious redirects are removed. We also provide (create) new domains every so often. Ultimately the very best option will be using your own domain within the ClickMeter tracking links: dedicated domain (Vanity URL). We are one of the few tracking and URL-shortening services offering this advanced feature. Alternatively you can also look at the feature.
How to track Conversions coming from your Craigslist ads:
After you know who viewed and who clicked your Craigslist ads, you may want to know who converted and which ads are working better. Using ClickMeter you can also track conversions (only available for PAID plans). This means that you will know who viewed your Craigslist ads and which of those viewers subscribed or became a paying member. This is super easy to do, and you can associate conversion tracking to both tracking pixels or tracking links. For more information look at this video about conversion tracking.
Important note:
Craigslist is not allowing IMG and LINK tags in most of the categories, including SALES and HOUSING. So for those categories it’s not possible to use the tracking pixel to track views or tracking links to track clicks: “A, IMG, FONT, TABLE, DIV, SPAN, CENTER are disallowed in the for sale and housing sections. Please use CL image upload for images”. As reported by some of our customers these are some of the categories where HTML tags are NOT accepted: • jobs >marketing/advertising/pr • jobs >sales • jobs >customer service • gigs >computer gigs • services >small biz ads*please make sure you test even if you are using other categories.
A possible workaround for categories like these is to publish the tracking link without linking it. See following example, the ClickMeter tracking link is the one circled in red. In this way you will not be able to track impressions (views) but you will track clicks and conversions.
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How to Find Out Who Posted Something on Craigslist
By Aaron Charles Updated August 24, 2017 i Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images Craigslist staff won’t divulge the identity of the poster unless compelled by a court order. However, if someone has posted an ad that’s causing you trouble, there are a few detective-like methods you can try to discern the poster’s identity such as reverse phone look-up, web searching or even with an email message. With more than 50 billion page views per month, Craigslist is one of the most popular online classified sites in the world. It is replete with job listings, garage sale announcements, apartments for rent as well as ads for romantic partners, missed connections, rants and raves, offers of services and much more. With so many anonymous ad possibilities, the potential for someone to cause trouble is high, but there are methods that might reveal the identity of the original poster. Reverse PhoneWhen a poster places a transactional ad on Craigslist – such as a “for sale” ad – she can choose to include her personal email address in the ad, opt for a temporary anonymized address issued by Craigslist, or include no email address at all but a phone number or other way of contacting instead. There’s a chance that you can uncover who posted the ad by entering that phone number in an online reverse directory, such as White Pages, AnyWho or Intelius. Look for the “Reverse Phone Lookup” on those sites. Another, simpler option is to enter the phone number into a search engine to see if a general Web search brings anything up, such as a website or social network SearchIf there’s no phone number in the Craigslist ad but there’s a personal email address, enter that into a Web search to see if you get any hits. Otherwise, sometimes taking what appear to be other key bits of text from the ad and doing a Web search for those, with quotation marks around them, you’ll find that they match content on a company or personal website. These key bits could be distinctive parts of a job ad or simply a peculiar use of words – anything different enough that it would jump out in a Web search. DirectYou could also try a more direct approach, as you never know what an ad poster might reveal in response to your questions, such as a website, phone number, personal email address – or even a name. Someone might reveal their name and email address to you themselves when replying to your email; the Craigslist message system sometimes carries through the “real name” field that some email users include with their address. And if you discover a website domain, try entering that into a Internet domain search, which could provide you with the domain owner’s – and perhaps the ad poster’s – name and more serious approach is to try to discover a poster’s identity through a court order. In such cases, you should talk with a qualified attorney who could help navigate you through that process. If successful, the court order would legally obligate Craigslist staff to provide whatever information they have about the slanderous post that could reveal the poster’s identity.
How to Find Someone’s Ad Through Their Craigslist Email
Sell your unwanted items on Craigslist.
When an account holder posts an ad on Craigslist, the online community creates an anonymous email address for him. This protects his privacy and reduces spam. Respondents interested in the ad can send an email to the anonymous address, and Craigslist forwards the email to the account holder’s email address. If you have emailed a question to the person who posted the ad and want to review the ad again but cannot find it, use the anonymous email address to search for the ad.
Step 1
Open the Craigslist website.
Step 2
Type the 10-digit ad identification number into the “Craigslist Search” box, located in the left pane. Find this number in the anonymous email address; it is the 10 digits immediately preceding the “@” symbol. For example, if the anonymous email address is “, ” type “1234567890” into the search box.
Step 3
Change the section in the drop-down box under the search box to match the location of the original ad. For example, if you are looking to purchase an item, it is most likely under “For Sale. ”
Step 4
Click on the arrow under the search box to find the ad.
Frequently Asked Questions about trace craigslist post
Can a Craigslist post be traced?
When a user visits your post on Craigslist, information about him/her will be tracked and stored in your ClickMeter account. Reports will include details such as unique or non-unique visitor, country of origin, IP address, time of visit, referral, browser information and much more.May 23, 2018
How do you find out who posted on Craigslist?
There’s a chance that you can uncover who posted the ad by entering that phone number in an online reverse directory, such as White Pages, AnyWho or Intelius. Look for the “Reverse Phone Lookup” on those sites.Aug 24, 2017
How do I find someone’s email on Craigslist?
Type the 10-digit ad identification number into the “Craigslist Search” box, located in the left pane. Find this number in the anonymous email address; it is the 10 digits immediately preceding the “@” symbol.
