Post Code does'nt work any more

[55bbug]

Hi

 

Up until a few weeks ago, I could search for local caches using my UK postal code. Not any more. Now I get directed to caches somewhere in Germany.

 

What's happening? Any suggestions?

 

Lu.

[+MartyBartfast]

Its broken, and has been for a couple of months or so. Click on the "Advanced Search Options" link and enter the postcode in that search box, which seems to be working OK.

[+The Mighty Shark]

I don't know where you guys must be looking but it works fine for me

that's assuming you are using the hide and seek a cache option?

Edited October 13, 2008 by The Mighty Shark

[+Dorsetgal & GeoDog]

It's intermittent.

 

Works fine for postcodes local to my home, dodgy on some of the away from hom ones I have tried.

[+little-miss-naughty]

it playes around for me to most annoying.

 

lmn

[+currykev]

We all know and have got used to GC.com's rather crap applications.

It is the slowest of all my fave websites.

It has a mind of it's own as to loading and mapping.

Even the new iphone application has been released without proper testing.(in my opinion of course)

Even the mods tell us what to do and say.

But at least it's not costing me more than my bank.

JUST!

 

ps..I still love it!

Edited October 13, 2008 by currykev

[+Simply Paul]

Can I add Bookmarks to the list? A great idea, applied dreadfully. It'd be nice to see which of my DNFs I've subsequently found too... Now I'm paying to be a Premium Member, I'm less inclined to put up with GC.com's many shortcomings. I know Jeremy will pop by if I say geocaching is essentially the same as letterboxing, so I hope he'll see there are some significant problems with the site, and extras affecting those caching in the UK.

[+Delta68]

I don't know where you guys must be looking but it works fine for me

that's assuming you are using the hide and seek a cache option?

 

Try the postcode search on the GC home page.

 

According to that I live in Ireland and work in Germany

 

That's one heck of a commute

 

Nearest cache:

294.3mi from your home coordinates

Edited October 14, 2008 by Delta68

[+Happy Humphrey]

The postcode function has had problems for several months now. It's been reported many times: see the main forum (try this link).

[+The Mighty Shark]

I don't know where you guys must be looking but it works fine for me

that's assuming you are using the hide and seek a cache option?

 

Try the postcode search on the GC home page.

 

According to that I live in Ireland and work in Germany

 

That's one heck of a commute

 

Nearest cache:

294.3mi from your home coordinates

 

Tried that. Still works fine for me.

The only thing I will say that my closest cache should be one that I own but it's down as being the 4th closest and to my reckoning is about 1/2 mile out but a darn sight closer than Germany or Ireland

[+nevryan]

The postcode function on the GC main page works fine for me as long as I add uk after the postcode, IP1 1AA gives me somewhere is Spain, IP1 1AA UK gives me Ipswich Suffolk. This seems to work for any part of the country.

[+Happy Humphrey]

I tried adding "UK" and it still says "A location for" <postcode> "could not be determined"

[Icarus.]

When I raised it with Groundspeak a while ago I was told that it was a Google problem......

[+Happy Humphrey]

Odd that it works on the "Advanced Search" page then...

[+Eclectic Penguin]

When I raised it with Groundspeak a while ago I was told that it was a Google problem......

 

When I raised it in the appropriate forum I got a blind round of nothing!

 

The solution is, as has been mentioned earlier, to put ", UK" after the post code - but despite the requirement for the second half of the post code so that it recognises it as a UK post code, the search is now only done on the first half. This means it's now area accurate (not even town accurate) not street accurate as previous.

 

So, it may well be very accurate for you or it may be as much as 10 miles out, depending on where you're searching within the post code area. Before the change, it was accurate to about a mile or so - my post code pointed to a location about 2 miles away which is fine for cache searching but may not bring the nearest caches back in order. Now it places my house about 8 miles away on the Gower peninsular, so I now resort to coordinate searches.

[+kewfriend]

It doesnt worry me that much but as far as I can fathom it:

 

* the advanced search works fine but ....

* the front page search (so to speak) resolves the first part of the postcode only

*any error either in typing or trying to resolve a valid postcode defaults to the next nearest country with postcoding

* the poscode database is not that up to date

 

===================

 

and while we are on about google and postcodes etc, why does GE pull up all the member caches, is that because the GE GC.COM addin is only available to members or what?

Edited October 14, 2008 by kewfriend

[55bbug]

Thanks for all the replies. So it's not just me, then.

 

I have to say that it's not such a big problem, I just have to go into "My Account" and search for nearest caches from there. I just wondered what was happening thats all.

 

Thanks again.

[+JeremyR]

When I raised it with Groundspeak a while ago I was told that it was a Google problem......

Yeah, that response gave me a giggle at first. Hundreds, probably thousands of websites rely on Google's geocoder service for things like postcode lookups, etc. Something tells me that if it was a Google problem, there would be a lot more noise being made from other websites too and that they (Google, that is) would have fixed it by now.

 

Buuuuuttt....

 

Try this - it's a sample page for Google's geocoder, set up by Google themselves. It too puts my old British postcode in Germany, just like gc.com does, lending support to GSP's 'not our fault' claim... Interestingly enough it works fine almost every time if you just enter the first part of the post code - I'd suggest trying the same with the gc.com postcode search - Google seems to ignore the second part anyway.

[+Happy Humphrey]

 

Try this -

Good spot: it behaves just like the Groundspeak version (i.e. it returns an error message for a postcode I know to be valid).

 

The mystery is, that if you use the Advanced Search, the postcode is found (even if it's not quite perfectly accurate).

[+JeremyR]

The mystery is, that if you use the Advanced Search, the postcode is found (even if it's not quite perfectly accurate).

Ack what happened there? Post got munched by the gremlins...

 

Here we go again, gist of the post was:

 

There are two ways to geocode a postcode with Google, the first tends to plonk us somewhere in Germany, the second is more or less dead accurate (explained in detail here - basically it uses Local Search instead of the geocoder to get the coords for a given postcode). I tried a couple of postcodes on that page and found them to be as close as makes no odds to perfect (<50yds out)...

 

I can only assume that the Geocaching Google map uses the geocoder and the advanced search in postcode mode uses the more precise method (or another service entirely, ISTR that they used to use Yahoo for geocoding postcodes?).

 

You can shortcut direct to the 'working' postcode search with this handy quick search plugin (for IE and Firefox):

http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.h...=geocaching+zip

Edited October 16, 2008 by JeremyR

[+Hound of Ulster]

Hi

 

Up until a few weeks ago, I could search for local caches using my UK postal code. Not any more. Now I get directed to caches somewhere in Germany.

 

What's happening? Any suggestions?

 

Lu.

 

Put UK after postcode

[+akh76]

Same issue. I live in Norway, and the postal code with "Norge" behind it has worked perfectly until now.

Today my results were first in Australia, even though I added Norway behind the code. Then I tried to add Norway in english, that sent me to Israel, and then I tried to add just NOR, that gave me results from Georgia...

[+and1969]

When I raised it with Groundspeak a while ago I was told that it was a Google problem......

Yeah, that response gave me a giggle at first. Hundreds, probably thousands of websites rely on Google's geocoder service for things like postcode lookups, etc. Something tells me that if it was a Google problem, there would be a lot more noise being made from other websites too and that they (Google, that is) would have fixed it by now.

 

Buuuuuttt....

 

Try this - it's a sample page for Google's geocoder, set up by Google themselves. It too puts my old British postcode in Germany, just like gc.com does, lending support to GSP's 'not our fault' claim... Interestingly enough it works fine almost every time if you just enter the first part of the post code - I'd suggest trying the same with the gc.com postcode search - Google seems to ignore the second part anyway.

 

There ought to be no need for Groundspeak to rely on Google for UK postcode coordinates.

 

UK postcode co-ordinates are available from OSGB (Great Britain only) and the Office for National Statistics whose dataset covers Britain and Northern Ireland. Their datasets use the British and/or Irish grids, but can be 'easily' converted to WGS84 lat/long; I use the word 'easily' confidently, because Groundspeak already perform conversions to the British grid in the opposite direction. Although, a cache I looked at at random in the RoI (GCZCFZ) offered a British grid reference. Converting from the Irish grid refs to WGS84, uses the same algorithm as the OSGB one, but with slightly different coefficients.

[+Jacaru & Wemnog]

It worked fine for me a few minutes ago.

[+MartyBartfast]

Errr, this thread originates from ~5 years ago, I think that problem was fixed (in the UK at least) a long time ago.