Forget Craigslist - I found an amazing apartment in San Francisco using Yelp

Few web services will break you like Craigslist.

It's the go-to classified ads site for people looking to find an apartment, and yet, Craigslist's visual clutter and chaos leaves most users dazed. Day one of my apartment hunt in San Francisco, I wanted to cry looking at the purple-and-white mess of listings.

Then I tried searching Yelp on a whim. It's the most tried-and-true recommendation site on the web, though typically reserved for restaurants and other retail operations.

But using Yelp, I found a new apartment in less than two weeks. Here's how I did it.