Frequently Asked Questions and General Help

Questions

• Why don't you show all the sites together? What's with the tabs?

  Many sites justifiably don't like people scraping their results. On the other hand, most sites appreciate traffic being sent to their actual results pages. So this is how AutoTempest is able to include all the major players. In addition, it makes for less of a learning curve, since the results are exactly what you'd expect searching the sites individually.

• Is it possible to show only results since a certain date, or filter the results in some other way?

  Unfortunately, this isn't as easy as it would seem. Because the results go directly from the cars sites to your browser, my code can't actually do anything with them. If the site itself (AutoTrader^® for example) allows filtering by date, we can tie into that; but if it doesn't, we can't. Essentially all AutoTempest does is present their features in a more convenient manner, then type the search queries in for you. (Not that it isn't extremely useful regardless... ;-) )

• Why do keywords only work for some sites?

  Unfortunately those sites don't support keyword searches. Sadly I'm limited in what I can do by what the sites themselves provide. (See the point above.) For a full list of which sites support what, Click here.

• How do I get the URL for an individual ad?

  If you want to get the URL of an individual ad, you'll have right click on the link to the ad and select "Open in New Window" or "Open in New Tab." This will take you directly to the ad page and you can easily grab it's URL there. Because of the way we display other sites' content on our site, we are unable to access any information from within the other site to provide a more convenient way of doing this.

Troubleshooting

• There's a car missing from the results, but I know it should be there!

  First, if it's a craigslist^® ad missing, please make sure you're viewing the results in the default format. On the craigslist^® (SearchTempest) tab, you'll notice there are two lower tabs called 'Craigs Results' and 'All Cities Together'. The All Cities format is powered by Google, which is great for doing a quick check over a large area, but will occasionally miss results. (Google's index is very accurate, but isn't perfect. New ads especially can slip through if they haven't yet been indexed.) 'Craigs Results', on the other hand, gives you the results directly from craigslist^®, so should never miss anything.

  Assuming you aren't using the Google mode, the most likely explanation is that you've set an obscure option such as maybe max mileage, which is filtering out the result you're interested in. If the ad shows up when you search the cars site directly but not on AutoTempest, make sure that your search settings are exactly the same on both sites.

  If you still can't see the ad, feel free to send me an email with the URLs of the two results pages, and let me know which ad you expect to see on AT but don't. I'll look into it ASAP.

• AutoTempest always forgets my search parameters, so I have to enter them again.

  AutoTempest should remember all your settings. If this isn't happening, you probably need to enable cookies.

• The craigslist^® results tab isn't working properly.

  The craigslist^® results are handled by our partner site, SearchTempest.com. Check out the SearchTempest FAQ for more info!

  Just remember that craigslist^® only deals in keywords - they aren't a cars site. So for example, if you search for a 1998-2002 car, you might also match an ad where someone has listed their ride for $2000. Similarly, "BMW M3" might match "Honda Civic - BMW M3 exhaust tips!!!".

  Some of this is unavoidable, but check out the options in the yellow section at the top of the craigslist^® results. Searching titles only, or only 4-digit years, will cut down some of the false positives, but might cause you to miss the occasional real result too - which is why I leave the choice up to you.

• I've got another issue that wasn't covered here.

  Here are a few general things to try when things don't seem to work right. (In fact, these steps can be useful when any website isn't working for you.)

  • Make sure your browser is up to date

    First off, make sure you have the latest version of your web browser. You can download the latest versions here: Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer.

    To check the version you currently have, look for 'About' under the Help menu.

  • Clear your browser's cache

    Occasionally old or corrupt files can become stuck in your browser. To clear them out, just follow the instructions here for 'clearing your cache'.

  • Clear cookies

    This one's easy - to clear all cookies from AutoTempest, just click here. You will, however, lose any saved search information.

  • Disable add-ons

    While modern web browsers themselves are usually pretty well built, add-ons can often contain bugs. If you use add-ons (aka extensions), even if they seem completely unrelated to AutoTempest, try temporarily disabling them (and restarting your browser). If that solves the problem, you can then enable them systematically to see which is the culprit.

  And if NONE of that works, we have a forum set up where you can search for more answers, or ask your own question. Check it out here. There's lots of useful info there already, and more being added every day. Feel free to post your question there if you don't see the answer already. I check for new posts regularly.

• Keywords

  The optional keywords box will allow you to filter the results for certain.. well.. keywords.

  Make sure you check all the other options first though. For example, to search convertibles, it's better to choose the 'convertible' body style by clicking 'More Options' than to type "convertible" in the keywords box.

  They can be very useful for some things though. ie.

  leather black

  to get cars with leather interior, black (either exterior or interior - but at least it narrows it down). Some sites (craigslist^® and eBay in particular) even support negative keywords, so you can eliminate ads with certain words like this:

  leather black -smelly -racoons

  Please note: Automotive.com unfortunately does not support keywords, so your entries will have no effect on their results.

• More Tips and Tricks

  • When you find a car you're interested in, rather than just clicking on the ad, try Control-clicking (Command-clicking on Macs) to open the ad in a new tab. This will allow you to keep the ads open for reference while you continue to search the listings.

  • One more time: remember that craigslist^® isn't a car site per se. If you search for 1987 Civic, you might get "Do your civic duty by purchasing a Yugo - $1987", or whatever. To reduce false positives, take a look at the yellow options section at the top of the craigslist^® results. You can choose to only search for 4-digit years (2003 instead of '03), or to search titles only (not the body of the ads). These will eliminate most of the bad results, but you might miss some real ones too, which is why I leave it up to you.

More tips will be added as they come up! And again, if your question isn't answered here, you can check in the forum, or fire me an email!