Show HN: AutoAPI Vehicle Web Crawler – Searches the Web to Find the Best Deals

http://autoapi.com/in/8kK8/recently-crawled

by AutoAPI • 11 years ago

11 15 11 years ago

autoapi.com

mihad• 11 years ago

down for updates, check back soon! :(

AutoAPI5• 11 years ago

Under high loads the site restricts access to non USA/Canada IP ranges

cherry_su• 11 years ago

It seems working now. (Mon July 13, 10:43 Pacific).

One thing I noticed is that the range is capped to 100 miles. An unlimited range would be incredibly useful for searching for used exotics, i.e. Ferraris, which is a valid input parameter :-). Since supply (both overall and for a particular configuration) is so limited, it makes sense to buyers to fly to see the car or to buy blind and ship the car to them.

AutoAPI5• 11 years ago

This will be added very soon. In the meantime, if you change "distance=100" in the url to "distance=all" you can search all results -- although in some cases we dont allow this (like if you havent select a make) as it is pretty intensive on the server when we have a lot of results to return.

andegre• 11 years ago

Can't select the model when trying to do a search.

AutoAPI5• 11 years ago

Do you have Javascript enabled? When you choose a make the models are fetched on the fly using AJAX

jonah2• 11 years ago

What sources are you searching? I searched all for particular car and got no results. I know there are over 500 on Craigslist alone.

AutoAPI5• 11 years ago

Craigslist does not allow websites to scrape their content

jonah2• 11 years ago

I just checked Autotrader too. 46 listed there. Car search is tricky. It's something I've been thinking about for a while now.

[Edit] I'd love to see someone do car search right!

mod• 11 years ago

What are you scraping? These all seem to be from dealers, marked up a ton.

sinzone2• 11 years ago

out of curiosity. what do you guys use for API management?

AutoAPI5• 11 years ago

Custom platform using Laravel, but definitely interested in Mashape. Have an email to discuss?

sinzone2• 11 years ago

aghi@mashape.com

Also tak a look at the open source API gateway http://getkong.org and https://apianalytics.com for Visualization and Monitoring of API traffic.

bbayer• 11 years ago

We have done similar search engine for Turkish used car ad sites. It has been really fun to build such a thing since there are number of things to compensate and normalize data collected from various sources. I have learned a lot while doing it.

http://www.otomobul.com

tzm• 11 years ago

Reminds me of Carsabi (YCW12). If I remember, they built a good product and found a vein, but ultimately struggled with a business model.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founders-...

Show HN: AutoAPI Vehicle Web Crawler – Searches the Web to Find the Best Deals

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