Oodle has three websites: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Just enter your city and state or zip/postal code and you'll find local listings. If you are interested in the specific cities we cover, you can see metropolitan area lists for the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

Oodle simplifies the classifieds shopping experience. With Oodle, you can not only see over thirty million listings from over 80,000 sources, but you can be the first to see new listings, have access to powerful tools that help you spot great deals, and relax while Oodle does the work for you. If you are selling something, you can post once on Oodle and distribute your ad across hundreds of partner sites.

Oodle gathers online classified ads from thousands of sites around the web. Our database is made up of listing information stemming from two sources: advertisers who send us a listing feed and websites we crawl for classifieds content.

If your ad is showing up incorrectly on our search results pages, please do the following:

Click the link from our site through to your ad. Does the original ad have the correct information? If so, please do the following:

1. Copy the URL of the ad at its original website
2. Contact Us and paste that URL into the contact form. Let us know what information is incorrect when you fill in the form and we will investigate the problem.

We support every operating system. For optimal viewing, we suggest Internet Explorer 6 or 7, Firefox 2 or higher, or the latest version of Safari.

1. Click "Register/Sign In" on the top right of any Oodle page.
2. Enter your email address. If you have set up an alert or posted an ad on our site previously, use the same email address.
3. Click the button by the statement "No I don't have an account yet", then click Continue.
4. Choose an ID.
5. Type a password twice, once into each box.
6. Enter your zip or postal code.
7. Choose your contact preferences.
8. Click Join.
9. To complete your registration, log into your email account, and click the activate link in the email that is sent automatically.

If you have set up an email alert by simply giving us your email address, you probably do not have a user name or password yet. Please sign up for an account by clicking the "Register/Sign In" link in the top right of the page.

1. Visit our homepage and click "Register/Sign In."
2. Sign into your account using either your email address or user name or the password you chose when you registered your account.
3. Click on the "My Account" tab.
4. Click on the "Edit" link next to the field you wish to change.
5. Type your email address or password twice (once into each box) and click "Save" when you are done.

If you have forgotten your password, but still have an active email address, you can click "Register/Sign In" from the homepage and then click the link that says "Forgot your Oodle password?"

Yes, placing an ad on Oodle is free. Your ad will be live for 30 days with unlimited text and up to 4 pictures. Even better, when you post your ad on Oodle, it will also automatically show up throughout the Oodle Network and on GoogleBase.

Placing an ad through Oodle is free and easy. To post your ad, just click the "Post a FREE Ad" button in the upper-right corner of the page, and then on the big "Post an Ad" button in the middle of the next page. The Post an Ad process takes you step by step through placing an ad through Oodle. When you place your ad through Oodle, it will show up on hundreds of other sites automatically, such as GoogleBase, Lycos Classifieds, Local.com Classifieds, and many more!

No. Anyone can post for free. We just need a valid email address.

Because classifieds are an inherently local experience, you must include a region when posting a listing to Oodle in order to receive the highest quality leads. However, when a user is searching, it is possible for that user to do a nation-wide search. In this circumstance, your item will be searchable nationally.

If you're posting a new ad, you can include up to 4 pictures. If you're submitting the URL (web address) of an ad that's elsewhere on the web, you can provide us one picture that will be a thumbnail image in classifieds search results.

You can upload pictures of up to 6MB in GIF, JPG, BMP, or PNG format. We'll resize your picture for web viewing.

To add pictures, click one of the "Browse..." buttons that show up under the "Add Images" heading on the "Describe Your Ad" page. Find the picture file on your computer and click "OK". The picture will then be uploaded and attached to your ad.

If your picture does not show up, you probably used a non-supported format (such as a PowerPoint document or a Word document). Please save your images as a GIF, PNG, JPG, or BMP.

There are two ways to edit or deactivate your ad:

1. Refer to the email we sent you when you posted your ad. There is a link in that email that will take you to a page where you can edit or deactivate your ad.
2. If you have an account on Oodle, you can manage your ads through the "My Posted Ads" tab of your personalized home page. Sign in to the site, click on your user name in the top-right corner of the page to get to your account, and then click the "My Posted Ads" tab. You'll see a list of all of your ads and you can click to edit or deactivate any ad.

Please note that you cannot edit the category or location of your ad. If you need to change the category or location, please deactivate your ad and create a new one.

You provide us your email address at the beginning of the process. We use that email address to create a "Contact Seller" form that potential buyers can use to contact you. That way, you do not have to put your email address or phone number on the web for anyone to see.

Ads posted on Oodle will automatically show up on hundreds of other sites in the Oodle classifieds network, such as GoogleBase, Backpage, and Walmart.com Classifieds. You don't have to do anything - we'll do all the work for you.

Your ad will be live on the site for 30 days and will then expire automatically, unless you deactivate it beforehand.

When you deactivate your ad on Oodle, it will automatically deactivate from other sites as well. It may take a day or so for the changes to propagate to GoogleBase and some other network partners.

To increase the chance of getting a good response, follow these simple tips:

• Include one or more pictures in your ad.
• Make the title and description as detailed as possible. For example, "2004 Blue Honda Civic good condition 74K miles" is better than "Used car for sale".
• If you are flexible on price, state in your ad that you will accept "best offer." "$15K or best offer" is standard, or "$15K OBO."
• Make it easy for buyer to pick up the item; let them know where the item is located and when you will be available.

Ads that are "Pending", "Processing" or "Waiting to be Indexed" are in our system but have not yet been added to our search index (so you won't be able to find your ad by searching on the site). Ads take approximately 30 minutes to be added to our search index.

If you have waited more than half an hour, but still see that your ad is "Processing", please try to search for your listing. For location, use the zip/postal code you entered and the category you chose when posting.

If you wait more than 3 hours and still cannot find your ad, please contact us with your Ad Id or other details of your ad (zip code/postal code, category, title).

If your item has sold, please remove your ad from the site by deactivating it (see "How do I edit or deactivate my ad" above). This will help keep Oodle free of ads that are no longer available.

If your ad has expired but you have not yet sold your item, you can create a new ad by clicking on the "Post a FREE Ad" button (or click here). You cannot re-activate an expired ad (at least, not right now. That's a feature we're thinking about for the future, though, so stay tuned).

Classified ads take approximately 30 minutes to appear on the Oodle site from the time of publishing. To see your ad, go to the category and location where you posted it and search for keywords that are in the ad (such as the ad title). You can check on the status of your ad by following the link provided in your self-publishing email.

If your thumbnail picture isn't showing up, you may have uploaded the picture in a non-supported format (such as PowerPoint (.ppt), Microsoft Word (.doc), or .tiff). Please try again with a supported image format (.bmp, .png, .gif, .jpg).

Also, sometimes it takes us up to 30 minutes to add your thumbnail image to the search results page. So, please check back.

If your image is in a supported format and you have waited at least 30 minutes for it to appear as a thumbnail, please and include your ad ID (if you know it).

Check to make sure that you are using an updated version of your Internet browser. If you are using Safari on an older version of Macintosh OS X, we suggest you try Firefox instead. If you are using a version of Internet Explorer that is older than version 6 we suggest upgrading to Internet Explorer version 6 or 7.

If your listing is already on the web, you can submit the URL of your existing webpage. Our web crawler will find your listing and add it to our database.

To avoid duplicate listings, please search for your listing on Oodle first to make sure we haven't already found your ad.

To create a linked listing, just use the "Post a FREE Ad" process.

A few notes:

• The "Map Address (optional):" field on the second post page should only be used if you want the potential buyer to know the exact address of the item you are selling. Otherwise, leave it blank.
• Above the description text field, there is a field that offers a choice to check the button that says "This ad is already on the web. Please link to it." This is the option you will want to choose. Be sure to include the entire URL your listing or website (beginning with http://).
• You may upload one image, and it will be the thumbnail for your listing on the search results page.

An email alert is an automatic notification about a classifieds search that you have entered. We get 500,000 new listings a day, so if you don't find what you're looking for right away, email alerts can help you find it in the future. They're convenient and free.

There are two possible ways to stop or manage your alert emails.

1. Open the email and click on the "Stop this alert" or "Unsubscribe from this alert" link included with every Oodle alert we send out.
2. If you have registered an Oodle account, stopping or managing your alerts is simple on your personalized homepage. Just visit our homepage, click "Register/Sign In" and log into your account. Once signed in, click on the "My Alerts" tab. Below each alert you will see a link "Stop this alert" - this will delete the alert. On the right of each alert title you will see the message "send me emails" with a drop down arrow. Click the arrow to choose how frequently you wish to receive messages. If you choose "Never" this will suspend the alert messages, and save it in your list of alerts, so that you can turn it on again at a later time.

Try checking your bulk or spam folder to make sure the email was not delivered there. If the email is not there, then .

Alerts are based on your initial search of the site, and cannot be changed or edited. If your existing alert is not providing meaningful listings, deactivate the alert and create a new, more specific alert. If you want higher quality results, the more specific (zip code, more attributes selected, etc.) your alert is, the better.

If you are suspicious about a listing that you see on Oodle, you should read the guidelines on our Safety Center. If you want to report a fraudulent listing, you can click on the "Report as spam/fraud" link at the bottom of the listing details view.

You can then go to the original site of the ad to mark the ad as fraudulent. Click on the title of the ad to go to the host site. Some ads will be hosted by us and some will be hosted by other sites. On the hosting site you can usually find a way to mark the listing as a scam.

For more information about shopping online classifieds safely, visit our Safety Center.

The "Report as Fraud" link on every listing enables the Oodle community to moderate the content in Oodle. By using the "Report as Fraud" feature located within the "more info and tools" section of each listing, you call to our attention any post you feel breaks our terms of use, is miscategorized, is fraudulent, or for any reason does not belong. Once reported, the ad is brought to our attention for review and if applicable, deletion.

The "Mark as Unavailable" link on every listing lets you improve the content in Oodle. By using the "Mark as Unavailable" feature located within the "more info and tools" section of each listing, you call to our attention any listing that does not lead you to the desired ad. Once reported, the ad is brought to our attention for review and potential deletion.

Oodle powers classified sites for over 200 leading brands, and these sites comprise the Oodle Network. The Oodle Network is constantly growing and adding new media companies, community sites and portals.

Here are just a few members of the Oodle Network:

• Lycos Classifieds
• Local.com Classifieds
• Military.com Classifieds
• Newspapers such as the Washington Post Express and the San Diego Union-Tribune, and, in Great Britain, The Sun
• Local news sites such as WPXI Classifieds (Pittsburgh), KIRO-TV Classifieds (Seattle), and WSPA Classifieds (Spartanburg, SC).
• ListPic.com, a fun visual classifieds browser

Adding listings to the Oodle Network search index is free and will provide additional traffic to your listings. The fastest way to be added to the Oodle Network search index is to provide Oodle with a feed. For more information, view the Oodle Network Feed Guidelines.