Gone are the days when the only place to find apartment listings was the back of a newspaper. Now you can conduct apartment searches of all sorts online, and its almost always packed with additional photos, video, and information.

Update: This list is now quite out of date, and we don't necessarily recommend the services on this page. To see a more current collection of the most popular apartment search tools, check out this updated list .

PadMapper / Craigslist

Craigslist is a popular destination among Lifehacker readers searching for apartment listings, but it isn't the most feature packed apartment listing tool. Fortunately PadMapper takes the spartan listings on Craigslist and aggregates them into a Google Maps mashup. You can search PadMapper just like you would Google Maps, and every pushpin in the map is an apartment listing. PadMapper results can be filtered by price, bedrooms, bathrooms, and pets. If you're already using Craigslist to do your apartment searching, PadMapper will put an extra zing to your search.

Apartments.com

Apartments.com is a veteran of the apartment search field. Their color-coded neighborhood maps will jog a few memories even if you haven't been apartment searching for some time. They don't have the flashiest site in the market, but thanks to being one of the original players in the online apartment-search field, they've got an absolutely enormous pool of listings. Nearly every listing has a photo tour and a significant number of them have 360 virtual tours. The color-coded maps are quite useful if you're unfamiliar with the layout of the city you're browsing in and help you quickly drill down from region to individual neighborhood. Apartments.com also has an iPhone app which combines the listings at Apartments.com with the GPS chip in the iPhone to create a location-aware apartment search tool. Love the neighborhood you're driving through? Hit a button in the iPhone app and see if anything is available.

MyApartmentMap

Pounding the Pavement

Now that you've had a chance to look over the contenders for the title of best apartment search tool, it's time to cast your vote to see which tool will be crowned king of the pad-finding-castle.

Have a tool we didn't list? Shocked that scouting-via-airplane wasn't considered? Sound off in the comments with your apartment finding tips, tricks, and tools.