"One data harvester, 3taps, said earlier this week that Craigslist had blocked search engines such as Google from including Craigslist pages in search results. But that report was inaccurate.
3taps’ product and quality assurance leader, Meg Nakamura, acknowledged Wednesday in a chat with The Chronicle that something fishy was taking place, but developers there haven’t fully figured out what’s going on."
His 3Taps service started as an exchange for classifieds, which he said would be pulled from eBay, craigslist, indeed, and others. But at some point all of the other vendors got dropped and 3Taps concentrated its efforts on craigslist only.
The 3Taps web site has had various "informational" pop-ups which are short and inflammatory (exaggerating the truth or spreading disinformation to attract media attention). His twitter feed is recently full of jibes about craigslist's site layout, policies, and management.
Saying that "newyork.craigslist.org does not have any robots.txt and can be crawled as you like" is false. Search engines follow redirects until valid robots.txt files are found. From that same document you linked:
3xx (redirection)
Redirects will generally be followed until a valid result can be found (or a loop is recognized). We will follow a limited number of redirect hops (RFC 1945 for HTTP/1.0 allows up to 5 hops) and then stop and treat it as a 404. Handling of robots.txt redirects to disallowed URLs is undefined and discouraged. Handling of logical redirects for the robots.txt file based on HTML content that returns 2xx (frames, JavaScript, or meta refresh-type redirects) is undefined and discouraged.
That article is from 2009, noting that CL had added the meta tag to posting pages. So I think this is old news.
I think storborg has it right in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4353120 when saying that "3taps seems to be claiming that Craigslist has cut off Google, but I think it's just that Craigslist has cut off 3taps."
Of the 10 results on the first page, 7 are within the last hour.
(1) Boat
sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/boa/3191071012.html
2 hours ago ... 408-726-8722 i don�t know about the motor or about the boat but if you want to
see it call.... that is the reason that i can�t wrote about the ...
SF bay area boats - by owner classifieds - craigslist
sfbay.craigslist.org/boa/ - Cached - Similar
SF bay area boats - by owner classifieds - craigslist.
(2) 1964 Fabuglas 16ft fishing boat
sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/boa/3191162483.html
1 hour ago ... This was my dads fishing boat. It runs good. But could use a little TLC. Its a 1964
16 foot Fabuglas out of Nashville Tennessee. Most of the ...
SF bay area marine services classifieds - craigslist
sfbay.craigslist.org/mas/ - Cached
Sat Aug 04. Shipwright/Boat Work - (berkeley) ... Boat & Marine Related Service -
(hayward / castro valley) ... SF Charter Boat, Book Now - (San Francisco Bay) ...
(3) SIDEWINDER 16' SPEED BOAT trade for services or...??? - Craigslist
sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/bar/3191164088.html
1 hour ago ... 1980 BLUE sidewinder motor boat. Seats 4. 35+mph. 70 hp 2 stroke VRO
Evinrude motor, no need to premix fuel. Runs strong. Starts right up.
Fishing / Hunting Boat
sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/boa/3176240765.html
6 days ago ... 2004 War Eagle Boat, semi v front flat bottom(17ft.), with a 2003 40hp Mercury(4
stroke) motor with 20- 25 hours on it. The boat is on an EZ ...
(4) Sailboat rudder off a 22' boat
sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/boa/3191237551.html
14 minutes ago ... 4'10'' tall rudder from a 22' boat. It is in great condition and is a solid Bay rudder.
Can be brought up in case of a grounding by pulling on a rope ...
(5) MB Sports V Drive Ski & Wakeboard Boat
sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/boa/3187986181.html
1 day ago ... 2002 MB SPORTS 220 V-Drive. This boat is an excellent for both skiing and
wakeboards. We have used it and enjoyed it for slalom skiing and ...
(6) * BAYLINER* NICE BOAT, NICE PRICE... BEST OFFER MOVING ...
sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/boa/3191163056.html
1 hour ago ... VERY CLEAN BOAT New wheel bearings on trailer. 3.0 Mercruiser 135 H.P.
Great on gas. 40-45 mph top speed. Just registered! Garaged for 7 ...
(7) wanted boat polisher
sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/boa/3191196564.html
50 minutes ago ... wanted boat polisher (pittsburg / antioch) ... I am looking for someone to polish
and wax my 28 ft boat. topside only dont have to do the hull.
Not sure I agree with most the conclusions drawn in that article.
The article does say that "sure enough, Google displays recent listings from Craigslist right now," which does seem to be true for me, too, when I try.
result number two in the set is that posting, with the following summary:
Giant MTX 250 Kid's Mountain Bike
sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/bik/3189980073.html
4 minutes ago ... Giant kid sized hardtail mountain bike for sale. It is a 21 speed, and it has front
suspension. The bike was always taken care of, and is in perfect ...
"4 minutes ago" tells me Google is having no problems hitting craigslist.
first result returned is that ad, with the following snippet:
Burning Man Beach Cruiser Bicycle
sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/bik/3189652975.html
22 minutes ago ... Neon Green cruiser bicycle, perfect for the playa, or cruising around town. Single
speed, great shape. Available nights and weekends.
--
"22 minutes ago" sounds like Google is still actively crawling content from craigslist to me.
Actually the part about search engines doesn't seem to be true... I just performed searches using Google, Yahoo, and Bing and got links to CL postings that were made within the last hour.