ADDING A GOOGLE MAP LINK TO A CRAIGSLIST (OR OTHER CLASSIFIED AD SITE) POSTING

I decided to write this brief post when I was adding a yard sale to Craigslist and saw that there was no instant way of adding an address, other than to type it hope people would find it. I thought it might be a little more helpful to add a link to Google Maps with the address in question. It’s a simple process that anyone can do.

STEP1 – GET THE MAP

Google Maps is brilliant. It’s also very easy. Simply point your browser to Google.com and type in the address in question. Usually you need the street address and ZIP, although Google Maps is getting better at realizing where things are locally, so your results may vary. Once you’ve entered your address, your search should end up displaying a map like the one above. If it doesn’t, no worries, because either way you should click the “Maps” button at the top to get the full screen map like the one below.

At the top right of the screen you should see a little icon that looks like a chain (link icon). It it doesn’t appear, press Ctrl and 0 (zero). Once the link icon appears, click it. You want to highlight the top box (“Paste link in email or IM”) and press Ctrl-C to copy.

STEP 2 – WRITE THE AD

If you’re using Craigslist, go ahead and write your ad. Other classified ad systems may or may not allow you to use links that you add yourself. Right now, Craigslist does. When you’re done writing your ad, put some text along the lines of “Here’s a map with directions” or something. This is your link text.

STEP 3 – ADD THE MAP

Okay – you’re going to do a tiny bit of HTML editing. All you need to do is move to the START of your link text and type:

<a href=”[paste your map link in here]“>

Where I have written “[paste your map link in here]“, you need to put the link you copied from Google Maps. To paste, simply press Ctrl-V. The text will be quite long, but don’t worry about that. Now, at the END of your link text, type:

</a>

You should end up with something that looks a bit like this:

<a href=”http://maps.google.com/maps?q=stree-numberandadress6&hl=en&z=16″>Click here for directions</a>

That’s it!

STEP 4 – SAVE THE AD AND TEST

Go ahead and save the ad. You can now test the link. Please note that on Craigslist, if you decide to re-edit the ad, you will lose any links when you save, so you’ll have to go through the process again. It may be different on other systems.

Good luck!