Project Detail

Description

**This is a small test project with the expectation of ongoing, daily data entry. Three bidders will be chosen and the most accurate & economical provider will be awarded the ongoing project. Accuracy over speed is important.**

Need data mined daily from the Craig's List website for Portland, OR (Multnomah County tab):
http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/apa/

Each day we need the PREVIOUS day's apts/housing rental listings checked to see if they're NEW and need to be added to our existing Excel database, or are GONE and need to be deleted from our database.

CHECKING FOR NEW LISTINGS:
Sample steps (screencast of steps provided to top 3 bidders) as follows:
1.open above link.
2. filter by portland.
3.find the top link for the previous day's listings & open it.
4.search our DB for that listing's address.
5. if found, you've nothing to add, so open the next Craig's list link.
6.if not found, you must add the data to our DB by copying and pasting from the website to our DB (easy, specific steps will be in video).
7.if a contact phone # or street address is not listed, a simple email should be sent to the owner, requesting the info using a gmail account we have.
8.move to the next listing and do the same steps.

REMOVING OLD LISTINGS:
1.starting at the top of the spreadsheet, copy the street address of the first record.
2.paste the address into the search bar found here:
http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/apa/
3. if the listing is found, leave the record intact in the DB.
4.if the listing is not found, shorten the pasted address to just the street numbers and search again. if it's still not found, delete the record from the DB.
5.check every record in the DB.

We will use Google's free doc service to share the test project DB with you. We found using two computer screens to expand your desktop doubles the input speed of copying and pasting from the web to the DB.

The daily data entry will need to be completed by 9 am (pacific standard time) daily for the *previous day's listings*.


Additional files submitted:
Test_DB.xls
instructions.txt