The new co-branded marketplace section on nypost.com provides 500,000 New York area listings in the categories of pets, general merchandise, tickets, and services. Post readers can also post their own ads for free.

"By partnering with Oodle, we can offer our users the best classifieds experience in the NY area," said Michelle d'Almeida, vice president of online and classified advertising for the Post, in a prepared statement. "Marrying their market-leading platform with our strong brand and 4.2 million users will produce the best marketplace for the NY area."

The move also gives Oodle a high-profile platform for expanding into the New York market. "This is a huge opportunity for classifieds in the New York area, especially because the Post hasn't had this category online," said Faith Sedlin, the company's co-founder and vice president of marketing.

Oodle provides free Web classifieds for more than 200 partner sites, about one-third of which are newspapers including The San Diego Union-Tribune. Village Voice Media's BackPage, an ad site covering 75 metropolitan areas, includes Oodle results in its classified listings. Oodle monetizes its free classifieds by placing relevant contextual display ads around them.

The company recently upgraded its search functionality--from letting users search listings "in context" by using market trend data, to building semantics features into the engine that understand abbreviations such as NY for New York. The upgrades also include new advertising opportunities like premium placement ads and a partner distribution network.

The Post and Oodle are counting on such features to help compete with free classified king craigslist in the New York market. Sedlin said Oodle's display ad rates have recently been increasing by 10% a month. "The bid advantage of working with the New York Post is that we can deliver quality local traffic to advertisers," she said.

The expanded online classifieds marks the latest step by the Post to bolster its online presence following the relaunch of the site last year with added content and a new look and feel.

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