Online Classifieds Market Overview
Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.
A few weeks ago we were briefed by the co-founder of vFlyer, Oliver Muoto, about the changes and new features in their upcoming release. Oliver gave us a great overview of the service (which we will talk about a bit later) but he also shared with us an interesting map of the entire classifieds landscape. The map shows a lot of activity in the space and lots of players in different niches. And this is not surprising, since classifieds is a volume business. If you can attract and retain customers, then you will make money because the margins are there. So in this post we look at what is happening in the different corners of the classifieds landscape - and try to figure out who is doing well and where this market segment is heading overall.
Source: vFlyer
General Marketplaces
We begin with an overview of the general marketplace - i.e. those companies that provide end-to-end service to sellers and buyers. All of these web sites allow you to both list and search for items in various categories. However the mechanisms and approaches of each are quite different.
Craigslist (Alexa 33) is
the grand daddy of simplicity in Web 2.0. Craigslist allows its users to list
geographical classifieds in categories such as personal, housing and jobs. Remarkably the
site only charges for listings in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York areas - which,
according to the traffic stats on Alexa, amount to approximately 33% of listings.
Known for its extreme simplicity, code-of-honor, self-governance and great customer service, Craigslist has attracted the power users - at least in the metropolitan areas. However, the company has not made a major push to grab all it can. According to a recent article in the SF Chronicle, craigslist is not focused on maximizing revenues (25M in 2005), despite the fact that it attracts almost 10M visitors from the US monthly. Bottom line, Craigslist is leaving some money on the table. This is not, however, easy money to take - but others are certainly trying.
Next we look at Google Base - the web giant's foray into the world of
classifieds. When it first came out a year ago, there was speculation it would force eBay
and Craigslist out of business! But even this six
month old article by Hitwise proves that rumor to be bogus. Google Base has
not taken off, at least not yet. Why not? There are perhaps several factors. First
it simply may not be obvious how general users get to the site. And once on the site, it
may not be obvious what to do.
There are definitely unique and positive things about Google Base. The bulk upload feature is great for power users. Perhaps Google's smartest play with the base to date was the recent release of an API. Any application now has an easy way to publish classifieds to the base. Since the listings are instantly available via RSS and are searchable on Google, this is a very compelling proposition.
And what about the economics? Since Google makes money via context sensitive ads, it does not need to charge listing or transaction fees. Can this ultimately sway people away from Craigslist? Perhaps, but it seems that for this to happen Google needs to do more marketing and more UI work.
edgeio (Alexa 17,500) calls
itself a distributed marketplace for classifieds. Publishing is always free of charge and
can be done in a number of ways. Here are a few very handy ones: a blogger can create an
instant listing in a post by using a special tag, people can submit listings by pointing
edgeio to existing web sites or RSS feeds, and large enterprises can request a data pull
via an API. But edgeio is not only creative when it comes to the consuming of data, they
do a great job on distribution as well. The edgeio content is syndicated on blogs and
websites in a variety of ways, from straight RSS to embedded widgets.
How does edgeio make money? There are many revenue streams. For example, if you do a search on their web site you will get context sensitive ads. Also, there is an option for advertisers to bid on the placement of the ad - based on the number of clicks. There is also an option to do the same but based on a fixed, one time fee.
Overall, edgeio is an interesting, evolving service. The key question is whether it can attract enough users. The traffic chart from Alexa shows there is no definitive growth, so we will have to wait and see on this one.
Vertical Marketplaces
From an infrastructure point of view, there is no reason to have a vertical marketplace. If you can list houses, you can just as easily list jobs and cars. But there is value from the user interface, semantical and specialization points of view.
Vertical marketplace sites can also offer domain expertise and value add. For example, Rent.com (Alexa 2,800) allows its users to find roommates - but also offers value add services like estimating and booking the moving. And Auto Trader (Alexa 800) offers an array of services, ranging from assessing the value of the car, to listing it, to getting a car loan.
In a sense these sites are more portals, than just marketplaces or search engines - since they strive to deliver an end-to-end experience. Despite that, Alexa traffic patterns show an overall decline in traffic for these sites over the past half year.
Vertical Search Engines
We have written before here about the rise of vertical search engines. The classifieds market is no exception, perhaps even a vivid illustration. The chart at the top of this article lists a range of vertical search engines ranging from generic classifieds to a narrow specific vertical.
In the jobs market, Indeed.com (Alexa 1,900) and Simply Hired (Alexa 6,300) offer a very similar feature set. Both have two initial search boxes for position and location, then allow the user to refine the search results based on various criteria.
The contenders that we looked at in the housing market were PropSmart, (Alexa 48,000) and Trulia (Alexa 4,500). Despite a big difference in traffic, both of these sites offer a similar interface. The initial search is done by geographic location, then the search results are displayed via a list and a map. Both sites offer nice ways of customizing the search results to help the user find what he/she is looking for. There is a feature on Trulia, which is nothing short of amazing, called "city guides". By typing in a city and the state, you get a report card which ranks the real estate activity and gives a ton of useful information.
Finally, we looked at two generic classifieds search engines - Oodle.com (Alexa 5,200) and Vast.com (Alexa 38,000). Again both are very similar, however we were not overly impressed with the results. Vast did straight text search, which defeats the purpose of a vertical search engine (hint: it needs to understand the semantics). Oodle did better, but was not as clean an interface as Indeed.com. Overall, both sites seemed a bit overwhelming because of the number of different tabs. Breaking it down to a refined vertical, adding more semantics and making results more relevant - would make these engines more appealing.
vFlyer - make it once, post everywhere
To come full circle, now we review vFlyer (Alexa 41,000).
vFlyer claims to do the heavy lifting in classifieds. Publishing a classified to the
vFlyer service instantly makes it available on many major classified sites and search
engines. It is not an easy job, but in our tests we found vFlyer to be
comprehensive and easy to use.
Conclusion
The Classifieds market is complex and rich. There is plenty of money to be made and, as the above players show, plenty of room for innovation.
So what really stands out? Craigslist has certainly been doing a great job. In a way, you can argue that their approach is perfect - just let the users fill in the ad. But things start to get interesting with the rise of the vertical search engines, which are able to "parse" and "understand" the semantics of the ads fairly well.
But should users input classifieds using structured forms? We believe so, since people get impatient when search engines don't deliver what they are looking for. So we think the semantics work being put in by classifieds services is well worth it - since it leads to more precise results and therefore faster transactions.
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The marketing of free classified is huge, but these sites providing the similar services, anything new?
Great post, Alex. We'd love it if you could check out Trovit, another vertical search engine for classifieds; we search for real estate, jobs and cars in UK, Spain, France and Italy.
Denver, this is mostly a summary/overview post. In terms of brand new stuff there is not much. IMHO, the vertical search engines are doing interesting things.
Alex
>>Craigslist (Alexa 33) is the grand daddy of simplicity in Web 2.0.
This is where I get pissed with the web 2.0 bullshit. Craigslist has been around since 96, maybe 97. I think the company still only has about 15 employees, and still works out of a victorian in san francisco...
it works cause its simple, free, and fun. no bullshit, no fancy graphics, no ads, no sprinkly glitter gifs...
Everytime I use AJAX this or Flash that it just becomes a pain in the ass.
anyway...i just had to rant, cause everytime I hear web 2.0 I wanna hit someone.
Lemon, you misread this. We are emphasizing simplicity not web 2.0.
Alex
I am in love with BIll Sergio he is the advertising king :-)
I will say that the traffic numbers you cite for the vertical portals are not necessarily related to a decrease in popularity, but more of a seasonal effect. If you were looking at a lot of numbers for the housing space, you want to remember that traffic for that sector peaks midsummer, declines through december and starts to increase in january.
You wouldnt see the same dropoff in the broader portals because they have so many categories. And you wont see it as clearly with the vertical housing search sites because they are still growing so fast they dont see it. I worked at Rent, and that was the way our traffic was during our fast-growth phase.
Hi, I've created a new (free) classifieds site: frosbo.org - just launched last month. So it was interesting for me to read this round up. Thanks!
My aim is to satisfy both the vertical and general markets at the same time. In fact I first envisioned the site as a cross between craigslist and vrbo. I do this by creating highly detailed (semantic) forms, but I am not limiting them to a single market.
For now, I have created just real estate listings: vacation rentals, homes 4 sale, and for rent.. However, I will soon be adding autos: cars, RVs, and motorcycles. And later watercraft, and on and on. I try to capture all the relevant details of each listing type, and to make everything optional except those most important details.
Some of the more unique features of the site are:
* Accepts listings in any language, in any country. Also, translation files are available for volunteers to help translate the site into other languages. Spanish translatin is already complete.
* Home page uses a geographical tree, where listings from any sub-region will appear in the parent region, blog style. Eg, listings in San Franciso will appear on pages for SF, California, USA, North America, and World (for a time). So every advertiser gets a stint on the home page, and longer and longer stints on each sub-page.
* World-wide proximity search. Eg, find all listings within 100 kilometers of San Jose, Costa Rica. Works via GPS coordinates.
* Each listing may contain an automatic photo slideshow.
* Videos hosted on video.google.com can now be embedded into the listings.
I'd like to invite y'all to check out the site. If you're an advertiser, go ahead and post a listing and let me know how it goes. I respond to all messages.
One More site: Safarri.com
Safarri is one of the most powerful sites in terms of features, but is also vies with CraigsList in being the easiest to use!
Safarri can browse items for sale on Base (and soon Vast too), and syndicates ads for sale with many of the sites listed here.
On top of all that Safarri is completely free, supports anonymous submissions, seller control panels, a flexible category drilldown browse system, a for sale sign generator, custom brandable user stores, maps, newspaper integration, and more!
Before you write it off, give Safarri a try! :-)
Good post Alex. In the end, simplicity will rule.
Re: >>Craigslist (Alexa 33) is the grand daddy of simplicity in Web 2.0.
I have to take blame for the "web 2.0" bit - which was my editorial addition to Alex's original wording. I just thought craigslist couldn't be considered the grand daddy of simplicity for all websites, but rather the current generation. Nothing to do with ajax etc.
Nice overview of the online classifieds market.
However, your comment, "But things start to get interesting with the rise of the vertical search engines, which are able to "parse" and "understand" the semantics of the ads fairly well.", is a bit of an overstatement. Most, if not all, search engines fail to recognize and 'understand' the ad content semantics. This is particularly evident with job search engines, SimplyHired and Indeed. A failure to consistently deliver exceedingly relevant job search results is paving the way for startups such as Just-Posted.com, http://www.Just-Posted.com.
Jeff, how is Just-Posted different from Indeed?
The fact that these engines are highly specialized will lead to better semantics and contextual understanding. This is all they focus on, so eventually they will be very good at it.
Alex
The only difference I could find between just-posted and indeed was that indeed's homepage was cleaner :-)
I don't think you need to focus on just one thing in order to do it well; in fact I think the more things you do well the more value you have for consumers! Just because something is all you specialize on doesn't necessarily mean you will eventually get good at it.
Its obvious that you need to be good at something to survive, but the secret to being good at something isn't just ignoring all the other markets!
I think the future is with "do everything" sites that are free, fun, and easy to use!
And yes, I do happen to run one of those sites, and yes, I do think mine is the best. But hey! Check it out for yourself and see what you think!
-Aubrey
Aubrey,
I think do it all sites are fine, as long as they bring consistency, correctness and simplicity accross the board. My point about the narrow verticals is that they have more time to perfect the search, but of course, you can do it too via good infrastructure.
Alex
Alex;
So really its not a question of who specializes the most, but who has the best infrastructure, is the most consistent, and is the most fun to use!
My point exactly. :-)
Aubrey
Any info on services marketplaces? Elance, Guru etc? recent newcomers like odesk may signal changes in ths area, any view on this?
Dan,
Interesting question... Richard and I will look into this.
Alex
Dan Libby;
I looked at Frosbo, here are my thoughts:
1) How do you do the distance search?
2) How do you do a keyword search?
3) Why waste the whole left column on a location drilldown when a simple "enter your location" field would suffice?
4) The ad view page needs to be compacted quite a bit. Scrolling to read the description is a pain.
5) The non aliased blue block layout could use some work :-)
Other than that, it liked it! The language filter feature is nice.
What do you think of my site - Safarri.com?
Also, just wanted to add another site by a friend of mine: postlets.com - its like vflyer with a way cleaner and friendlier interface.
Alex, thank you for inquiring (post #13) about the difference between Just-Posted.com and Indeed. The answer is found in each search engines' job search results. Just-Posted.com's advanced search algorithm is based on natural language processing, latent semantic analysis, Bayesian belief network, etc. to understand the context of a user's query to return the most relevant matching job leads available. Single and bi-gram keyword searchs are easily handled by most search engines. Multi-gram keyword (or mutli-worded, phrases) are oft times too complex for most search engines. Legacy job board and search engines such as Indeed are incapable of returning relevant job search results on a consistent basis.
A second Just-Posted.com differentiator is its user interface. The job search form boasts a 'relevance' threshhold feature that enables users to search and view tightly focused job search results. If a user seeks a job opportunity in a highly specialized discipline - she has the option to increase the 'relevance' threshhold to 99% to view jobs that are deemed 100% relevant.
Thank you for taking time to ask about Just-Posted's advanced job search engine.
Aubrey, many thanks for your post (#14) about the difference between Just-Posted.com and Indeed. No doubt user interfaces must be clean, easy to use and intuitive. On this point we agree. However, the real magic is under the hood. The Just-Posted.com job search engine deploys an advanced, self-learning, search algorithm that delivers exceedingly relevant matching job search results. The front-end search form is quite easy to change and is easily syndicated, co-branded to suit third-party Web properties.
Jeff;
From Wikpedia:
"LSA uses a term-document matrix which describes the occurrences of terms in documents; it is a sparse matrix whose rows correspond to documents and whose columns correspond to terms, typically stemmed words that appear in the documents. A typical example of the weighting of the elements of the matrix is tf-idf (term frequency–inverse document frequency): the element of the matrix is proportional to the number of times the terms appear in each document, where rare terms are upweighted to reflect their relative importance. This matrix is common to standard semantic models as well (though it is not necessarily explicitly expressed as a matrix, since the mathematical properties of matrix are not always used)."
I did some more experimenting with just-posted, and noticed that all your results are supplied by vast. Since I am quite familiar with the Vast API, I wanted to point out that the relevancy threshold is built into it :-) As far as the latent semantic analysis stuff, why? Vast doesn't support keyword weight yet, so i'd assume all your matrix is doing is dropping out words like "it" and "the". Isn't it easier for users to not even type in those words in the first place? Why are "Multi-gram keyword" searches better for users?
I am also wondering why anyone would want to pay $500 a year to post jobs, when they can get their ads on Vast for free using sites such as Safarri and Postlets.
Just some ideas,
-Aubrey
P.S. I made a side by side comparison of Safarri and eBay: http://safarri.com/tips-id-9
Jeff;
From Wikpedia:
"LSA uses a term-document matrix which describes the occurrences of terms in documents; it is a sparse matrix whose rows correspond to documents and whose columns correspond to terms, typically stemmed words that appear in the documents. A typical example of the weighting of the elements of the matrix is tf-idf (term frequency–inverse document frequency): the element of the matrix is proportional to the number of times the terms appear in each document, where rare terms are upweighted to reflect their relative importance. This matrix is common to standard semantic models as well (though it is not necessarily explicitly expressed as a matrix, since the mathematical properties of matrix are not always used)."
I did some more experimenting with just-posted, and noticed that all your results are supplied by vast. Since I am quite familiar with the Vast API, I wanted to point out that the relevancy threshold is built into it :-) As far as the latent semantic analysis stuff, why? Vast doesn't support keyword weight yet, so i'd assume all your matrix is doing is dropping out words like "it" and "the". Isn't it easier for users to not even type in those words in the first place? Why are "Multi-gram keyword" searches better for users?
I am also wondering why anyone would want to pay $500 a year to post jobs, when they can get their ads on Vast for free using sites such as Safarri and Postlets.
Oh: and as an idea, you might try adding job categories.
Thanks,
-Aubrey
P.S. A side by side comparison of Safarri and eBay: http://safarri.com/tips-id-9
Hi Alex,
I really wish you had also looked at Closo.com, I have to admit, we messed up a bit on the marketing side and the product does not look simple and is currently infested with feature-creep, but we'll probably fix that some time soon.
But the important thing is, Closo takes an approach like VFlyer.com where it allows the Seller to create listings and then market them to different marketplaces all around the world (paid and unpaid), then, the Closo front-end allows the Buyers to search and sift all the listings based on locality just like how Oodle or SimplyHired help people.
Back to the sellers again, Closo allows a seller to manage his entire E-Business from within Closo, in that way it's almost like a Salesforce for eCommerce, it has a CRM system, an order management system, order fullfilment system, payments system, inventory management, marketing and feel generation/management/statistical tracking (in that way it's similar to SingleFeed.com (singlefeed charges for this service while Closo offers it for free). Also, Closo hosts your Ebay template and allows you to post to Ebay within your template then tracks statistics for you. It also allows you to create a flyer and print it out and post it locally. It does almost everything.
Anyways... the problem with it is that it needs to be de-infested from scope-creep and remarketed. We are working on some ideas now, we'll see what happens;)
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Aubrey -
Thank you for taking time to use the Just-Posted Inc. [http://www.Just-Posted.com] job search engine, and for sharing your comments and questions.
Let's see ... where to begin!
Yes, our job search engine incorporates VAST's API. No, not all of the jobs in our index are from VAST. As a matter of fact, very few of the jobs sourced by VAST's API are in our index. VAST's strength is its crawler technology, not its ability to discern search result relevance. According to VAST's CEO, Naval Ravikant, VAST.com is little more than a vanity site designed to showcase its crawler technology.
Just-Posted boasts its own, advanced crawler; a perfect complement to the search engine's 'relevance module'. Search queries trigger immediate review and analysis of our index, i.e., millions of jobs from among thousands of Web properties, for relevant data. Once culled, this data is dynamically passed through 29 filters (i.e., natural language processing, latent semantic analysis, morphological analysis, etc) to reduce false positives and return the most relevant matching search results available. It is this second filtering process that separates the wheat from chaff -- Just-Posted.com from legacy job boards and search engines. While most competing search engines are capable of returning search results from one and two-word search queries - they struggle to grasp the contextual relevance of multi-grams (2+ keywords), and are incapable of returning exceedingly relevant search results.
Here is an example: A multi-gram keyword search on Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com for a 'software engineer in charge of financial applications' job yielded the following marginal search results -
Monster returned a total of six (6) search results. These results included job postings for an 'IT Manager - Engineering Systems' and a 'Lead Painter'.
CareerBuilder returned a total of fifty (50) search results, including job postings for an 'ERP Project Manager', and a 'Diretor of Client Services for a Financial Services Comp'.
Clearly, these job boards subordinate the user (job seeker) experience by returning mediocre, irrelevant search results. This malady is by no means exclusive to Monster and CareerBuilder. Most search engines, including vertical search engines, i.e., employment, real estate, shopping, autos, health, etc., even Google are 'relevance' challenged.
Lastly, employers and recruiters have enthusiastically adopted our annual fee of $500 for unlimited job postings. Here's what they have told us: traditional job boards such as Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, Hotjobs!, etc. charge nearly $400 for a single, 30-day job posting. This is simply too cost prohibitive. Consequently, nearly 70% of all available jobs never see the light of day on job boards. And, while an employer may be enticed to post its jobs on Safari and Postlets - the likelihood that they will be viewed by an interested, qualified candidate is remote. These properties simply don't have the ability to discern 'relevance' from 'irrelevance'.
If you have any suggestions or comments about how we can improve the user (search) experience by all means drop me a note at: operations (at) Just-Posted.com.
Many thanks.
Jeff
Thanks for this great overview, but you forgot vivirama ( http://www.vivirama.com ;-)
In your classification, vivirama belongs to the 'vertical marketplaces' category. It's a housing listings website that lets you find/post for free any kind of offer (flatsharings, rentals, swaps...) in any part of the world. It's integrated with Google Maps and lets you search graphically by area and across cities (even countries) by simply dragging/zooming the map to show the area you're interested in. It also integrates RapLeaf's portable reputation system to help you grow your reputation as a flatmate, swapper, landlord or tenant, which can be useful to make smooth transactions.
I aim to provide the best user experience when searching and browsing for housing around the world.
Check it out and tell me what you think, I will be happy to receive your feedback! (you can write me at feedback@vivirama.com)
Xavi
Jeff;
Your statement that "No, not all of the jobs in our index are from VAST. As a matter of fact, very few of the jobs sourced by VAST's API are in our index." spurred my interest, so I did a couple more searches on your site. To my disappointment, every single item returned said "Source: Vast".
I then tried the search you suggested, namely "software engineer in charge of financial applications". The result? Five items, all of which were returned by Vast.
While I am sure that your buzzword-drenched algorithms ensured that the five items I saw were extremely relevant, I was a bit disappointed with the small number of results returned by your "flagship" search string.
I tried the same search on Vast and was greeted by "about" 23,182 items, most of which looked pretty relevant to me.
I am sure that "not all" of the items in your index are returned by Vast, but I think it is safe to say that most of them are. With this in mind, I would assume you are using the Vast API to access them.
As far as having your own "advanced" crawler, Vast's "Steal This Site" page clearly states: "You MAY NOT use it [Vast's dataset] for: * Creating input or data for your own crawler or spider". Since we have already determined that "most" of the data on your site is supplied by Vast, I think it is safe to conclude that your crawler has a rather easy life :-)
As far as you claiming that:
"while an employer may be enticed to post its jobs on Safari and Postlets - the likelihood that they will be viewed by an interested, qualified candidate is remote. These properties simply don't have the ability to discern 'relevance' from 'irrelevance'."
, you are mistaken. Both Safarri and Postlets automatically syndicate their ads with leading classified aggregation services from all over the net (Including Vast.com - where "most" of your ads come from).
All your ad submission page says is "All jobs are indexed and posted daily". Who indexes them? who knows! If your own crawler is the "indexer" mentioned here, I would assume this paragraph means that jobs posted on your site show up nowhere but on your own site. If this is the case not only is posting ads on Safarri:
Cheaper (totally free V $500 p/ year), Easier (totally slick interface and no registration required), and More Fun (See "Easier"), but ads posted on Safarri get WAY more coverage.
I like your site, but think it could use a bit of a buzzword cleaning.
Xavi;
I checked out Vivirama. Nice one page site!
I was a bit disappointed that there were only two items in my home continent (the United States), and my disappointment changed to tears when I clicked on the US and it said "no items available". I like your interface though, and hope people start posting things soon! In the meantime you might want to check out hotpads.com - their site is pretty cool, or Safarri.com - my own site!
-Aubrey
Aubrey:
thanks for checking out vivirama. Just want to clarify that the 2 listings that are indicated for US in the home page do really exist, it's just that when you clicked on US, the visible area of the map didn't contain the cities where those 2 listings are located. This is because the sidebar only shows the listings contained in the visible area of the map (this allows to search graphically by area, although it might be confusing in some case like you've found out), except at lower zoom levels (like the default zoom level of the home page), in which all listings are shown. The listings are in Albany (California)
http://www.vivirama.com/united+states/california/albany
and New York:
http://www.vivirama.com/united+states/new+york/new+york
I also hope more people post in vivirama :-)
Thanks again!
xavi