Craigslist reportedly blocks search engines to kill competitors

A third-party site that relies on Craigslist data has accused the classified giant of changing its policies in an effort to kill it off.

Craigslist has reportedly told major search engines to stop indexing its users' ads. That could leave 3taps -- which operates the site Craiggers and re-publishes the data for use by third parties such as Padmapper to use -- out in the cold. "At approximately noon on Sunday August 5, Craigslist instructed all general search engines to stop indexing CL postings," says a statement on the 3taps homepage. Because 3taps had been harvesting Craigslist data from cached copies offered by Google and Bing, the move to block search engines means Craigslist is "effectively blocking 3taps and other third party use of that data from these public domain sources," 3taps claims. "We are sorry that CL has chosen this course of action and are exploring options to restore service but may be down for an extended period of time unless we or CL change practices," the company says.