Oodle 2.0: More intelligent classifieds shopping

The classifieds aggregator site Oodle has just launched its 2.0 version. While the underlying functionality hasn't changed, the site got a good design refresh and now presents more relevant data to the user. And, of course, its database of crawled sites continues to grow, making the results more relevant.

As before, Oodle does some semantic analysis of your search query when you go looking for an item. If you type in "Toyota Sienna," Oodle knows it's a car, and on the results page lets you narrow your selection down by model year, color, mileage, and so on. The site also now displays useful data, including charts showing pricing trends (see also MPire, which does this for new items) and the number of new listings that match your search that it expects will pop up in the upcoming week. That bit of information can help you decide how aggressive you need to be about jumping on a listing you like. Oodle also tells you how much the listed price for an item is above or below the average for the product, and it seems to be smart about things like model years, which makes it highly useful.

You can also set up e-mail alerts, so you're notified when new listings matching your query appear. This is great if you want to watch the market for an item before you get serious about buying.

Oodle claims that improved spam detection in 2.0 will also reduce the number of bogus entries you have to deal with in your search.

Oodle 2.0 really is an improvement. The site is now smarter and more useful than before. However, Oodle still doesn't index Craigslist, which is a crying shame and a topic for a good rant (against Craigslist), but it does search eBay and Kijiji, the classifieds site eBay's acquired in 2005.