about > help > search
To use the search feature, simply type in the key word(s) that you are looking for, select the heading or category and then click " > " or "search" if you are already in a category.
Example: You type the word "desk" and select the "for sale" area. Click the " > " to see the results.
If you want to narrow your search to a particular subregion (north bay, city of san francisco, east bay, etc.), select the subregion from the right side of the home page and then do your search.
If you only want to search within a particular category, click on the category and use the search feature at the top right side of the page.
Common words like "the" or "and" are removed from searches because they occur very frequently. If this happens, you will see a message at the top of the results telling you which words were ignored.
Advanced Searching
If simple keywords don't find what you are looking for, here are some advanced features to try.
Phrase Search
You can use quotation marks to search for a phrase:
"low miles"
That will find posts that contain the term 'low' followed by 'miles'.
Excluding Terms (filtering)
To specify one or more words you'd like to exclude, use a minus sign to negate them.
honda black -red
That will look for postings that contain 'honda' and 'black' but not 'red'. Note that a search must contain one non-excluded term.
"OR" Searches
By default, every term in your search must match unless it is excluded with the minus sign (see above). You can specify a list of terms that you want to find one or more of (instead of ALL of them) using a "pipe" character '|' like this:
honda | toyota
That query looks for postings that contain 'honda' or 'toyota' (or both).
Grouping
Finally, you can group terms together in parenthesis when queries are complicated:
red (toyota | honda) -2000 -2001
That query tries to find all listings that contain 'red' and either 'honda' or 'toyota' (or both) but do not contain 2000 or 2001.
Posting ID
If someone has given you the Posting ID (9 digit number), you can use that number in the search box to find the posting.
Still have questions? try our help desk discussion forum or send us a note.