Improving Gumtree for browsing cycling ads

[sluiper]

Not sure if anyone else has this irritation but I thought I'd post it in case someone finds it helpful. I like trawling Gumtree for cycling ads, in the hope I might spot a bargain and add to my collection of (too many) bikes and/or components.

 

Unfortunately some people are using Gumtree as their primary means of advertising, often re-posting hundreds of ads on a daily basis and cluttering up ads posted by people just selling one bike or a few components. That means that on every page of ads there might only be 3 or 4 "real" ads posted by people who aren't dealers. Just to be clear: I have nothing against these "dealers": good for them if they manage to make a living off of Gumtree, I'm just not interested in what they're selling.

 

Gumtree doesn't have the functionality to exclude ads by specific advertisers, so I thought I'd fix this myself to improve my personal browsing experience. 

 

Another issue I have is that I often see an ad only to realise it's in George. George is technically in the Western Cape but it's so far away it's practically impossible to see whatever you want in person. Again, Gumtree doesn't allow you to filter out specific areas only so when I'm browsing Western Cape ads I always see ads in the George area.

 

The solution I came up with to solve for the above problems is as follows:

 

1. Install AdBlock (https://www.getadblock.com/). Added bonus: no ads. Just remember to exclude https://bikehub.co.za/

2. Open AdBlock settings, go to Customize and add the following filter manually to exclude a specific seller:

 

www.gumtree.co.za##div[data-seller-name=NameOfSeller]

 

3. Add the following filter to exclude a specific area:

 

www.gumtree.co.za#?#div.related-item:-abp-has(div.related-ad-content:-abp-has(div.location-date:-abp-has(span:-abp-contains(NameOfRegion))))

 

4. Repeat 2 and 3 for as many sellers/regions as you need.

 

Obviously, replace NameOfSeller/NameOfRegion with whatever the name of the seller/region is that you want to exclude. The name of the seller is visible on the page of the ad itself or, if you're a ninja, inspect the content of the page, select the data-seller-name element's value  and copy from there.

 

Unfortunately the above method doesn't work if the person posting hasn't updated their profile with a name. In those cases I just exclude the whole suburb the person is posting from. Sucks to not see the 1 or 2 real ads from that suburb but makes the browsing experience infinitely better.