[stomachmonkey]

As annoying as it is, why craigslist choose to keep their searches focused locally is entirely their decision. They have a reason for it, we may not agree and it may not be a smart decision but it is how they want things.

If a 3rd party service provides the broader CL searches and also has advertising on their pages then they are deriving revenue from CL's content. Remember CL only charges for employment and real estate listings. Standard classifieds are free so if they don't profit from it then why should someone else.

There very well could be an issue with how these other services impact CL's infrastructure. With local listing CL's servers and databases are set up a specific way. It's quite possible that some query methods put unnecessary load on their databases that they were not designed to deal with or that negatively affect performance.