Search Options

[+tumbleweed42]

Does anyone else think that the current available search options are TERRIBLE?!!

The entire search engine needs to be revamped, in my opinion. There should be options for multiple search fields. If I am looking for a cache, for instance, that begins with a particular letter/number, I don't want to see the ones that are located half way around the world from my location! There should be options for filters and sorting beyond what is currently available. So what if I can sort by favorite point score? I can't sort by location or description, which are generally much more relavant. The mobile app has a little more to offer, but it is also severely limited. Am I the only one who feels this way?

Edited July 5, 2013 by tumbleweed42

[jholly]

Does anyone else think that the current available search options are TERRIBLE?!!

The entire search engine needs to be revamped, in my opinion. There should be options for multiple search fields. If I am looking for a cache, for instance, that begins with a particular letter/number, I don't want to see the ones that are located half way around the world from my location! There should be options for filters and sorting beyond what is currently available. So what if I can sort by favorite point score? I can't sort by location or description, which are generally much more relavant. The mobile app has a little more to offer, but it is also severally limited. Am I the only one who feels this way?

 

No. But the ones that matter don't care, they are only interested in server performance.

[+kathysgeek]

I'm a bit confused by jholly's remark. I think he meant to answer yes?

Edited July 6, 2013 by kathysgeek

[+kathysgeek]

Does anyone else think that the current available search options are TERRIBLE?!!

The entire search engine needs to be revamped, in my opinion. There should be options for multiple search fields. If I am looking for a cache, for instance, that begins with a particular letter/number, I don't want to see the ones that are located half way around the world from my location! There should be options for filters and sorting beyond what is currently available. So what if I can sort by favorite point score? I can't sort by location or description, which are generally much more relavant. The mobile app has a little more to offer, but it is also severely limited. Am I the only one who feels this way?

 

I totally agree with you tumbleweed42.

 

Searching by leading text in the cache name hearkens back to the pre-web days. How about being able to do a Google-like search for the text in a cache description?

Free search index tools such as http://lucene.apache.org/core/ are available.

A good search will add some load to the servers but isn't that what we are paying for with premium memberships?

 

It makes good business sense to improve the online tools to capture more web clicks. Forcing cachers to download pocket queries into GSAK just to perform adequate searches leaves the door wide open to competitors.

Edited July 6, 2013 by Keystone
to comply with forum guidelines

[+painthorsea]

Also for ideas to help to search, an option to restrict geocaches to a certain country. I live on the boarder of Canada and US, so every time I do a search I end up with lots of caches from the states. It just gets annoying after a while...

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Does anyone else think that the current available search options are TERRIBLE?!!

The entire search engine needs to be revamped, in my opinion. There should be options for multiple search fields. If I am looking for a cache, for instance, that begins with a particular letter/number, I don't want to see the ones that are located half way around the world from my location! There should be options for filters and sorting beyond what is currently available. So what if I can sort by favorite point score? I can't sort by location or description, which are generally much more relavant. The mobile app has a little more to offer, but it is also severely limited. Am I the only one who feels this way?

 

I totally agree with you tumbleweed42.

 

Searching by leading text in the cache name hearkens back to the pre-web days. How about being able to do a Google-like search for the text in a cache description?

Free search index tools such as http://lucene.apache.org/core/ are available.

A good search will add some load to the servers but isn't that what we are paying for with premium memberships?

 

It makes good business sense to improve the online tools to capture more web clicks. Forcing cachers to download pocket queries into GSAK just to perform adequate searches leaves the door wide open to competitors.

 

I've done a fair amount of development using Lucene and even more so, with Solr (http://lucene.apache.org/solr/). As far as load on the servers goes, I suspect that indexing the GS database into a Solr index, then searching against that index would probably *reduce* the overall server load. I've got a development machine, a relatively small server with only 4gb of memory, that has three instances of Solr (with four indexes) and the performance is quite good. One of those instances indexes about 380K documents with about 20 fields in each document (that took me about 1.5 days to implement), but that' actually pretty small scale for Solr. On another project I'm working in we're indexing the entire university library catalog (about 7 million records) and I know of a project in Denmark that has about 180 million records in a solr index. I have seen a single search option request that couldn't be easily done if the GS database was indexed using Solr.

 

 

[+Darth Dadious]

YES! I would also like the search options to be opened up a little. It would be sweet if We could filter by cache size and also by cacher's name or even by Cache name.