

Show HN: AutoAPI Vehicle Web Crawler – Searches the Web to Find the Best Deals - AutoAPI
http://autoapi.com/in/8kK8/recently-crawled

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tzm
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-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/facebook-acqhires-founders-of-
carsabi-who-will-sell-off-their-car-price-comparison-site/)

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cherry_su
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.

~~~
AutoAPI
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.

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bbayer
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](http://www.otomobul.com)

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

~~~
AutoAPI
Craigslist does not allow websites to scrape their content

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jonah
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!

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

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

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mihad
down for updates, check back soon! :(

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

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

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

~~~
sinzone
aghi@mashape.com

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

