• ClickZ, Monday, July 7, 2008 12 PM

The Internet's biggest players are finding it nearly impossible to unseat Craigslist at the top of the online classifieds pile. Even so, analysts describe the space as in flux, as a variety of vertical classifieds providers (Yahoo Autos, CareerBuilders, Zillow) flood the market, stealing traffic from the bigger players.

"Classifieds is a field in turmoil," Peter Zollman, founding principal of Classified Intelligence, a consulting firm that specializes in online classifieds, told ClickZ. Microsoft, for one, recently announced that it would discontinue its classifieds site, Windows Live Expo, effective July 31. Apparently, the site didn't gain enough traffic to be measured by Nielson Online. "Live Expo was a feeble attempt because Microsoft never really put its power of promotion and marketing and operations behind it, and so it never got critical mass," Zollman said.

Google's would-be Craigslist killer, Google Base, is also floundering. The site attracted just 743,000 unique visitors in May compared to Craigslist's 26.7 million, according to Nielson. Local media analyst Greg Sterling says that Google doesn't know how to position Google Base, which seems to mostly drive traffic to other vertical classifieds providers rather than containing any real valuable classifieds of its own.

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