Using the GC.com search

[+Astartus]

Ok, as a veteran ggeocacher (more than 5.700 finds) it is a little emberassing to ask this.

 

So far, I haven't really used the "Search Geocaches" funtion on the gc.com page alot, as I get all my geocaches via PocketQueries and the API.

But lately, I wanted to search for all geocaches, that contained a specific word (both as a single or part of another word).

But the search function on the gc.com website only shows caches that start with the word, and there seems to be no option to also look deeper in the cachename.

 

For example:

I want to look for caches containing the word "apple".

Using the search I would get cachenames like "Apples to Apples", but not "On top of the apple tree" as this cachename does not start with "apple".

 

Does anyone has an idea how I can search for all geocaches that contain a special word, no matter where in the name it is located?

If these are SQL queries, I wonder why Groundspeak has no option to look for "LIKE = %KEYWORD%".

[+dprovan]

They disabled that feature several months ago because their servers couldn't support the load. There were lots of complaints about the prefix only search, but they held their ground.

 

I do fancy searches using emacs on the pocket query file, which gives me full regular express searches, but GSAK should also do the trick. Either way, I actually think that's more likely to be what you want than the geocaching.com search, since the web site's search would return every cache everywhere, but a search of a specific database will return only caches in the database's area, which are typically the ones you're really interested in.

[+Astartus]

Thanks for the info. So I was right remembering that this was in fact a viable option in past times.

 

Sadly GSAK won't do the trick, as I wanted to search for all geocaches worldwide with on given keyword. In this case, the keyword would have been "waymark" as in groundspeaks Waymarking.com

I wanted to know of all caches that were created as a Waymarking challenge.

[+Bear and Ragged]

There is a way using Google...

 

Not too sure of the specifics, but adding in to the Google search bar site:geocaching.com with what you want to search for, gets a site search.

 

As I say, not too sure of the exact way it's done.

 

(Has been mentoned on the forums, if you wish to search. )

[cezanne]

They disabled that feature several months ago because their servers couldn't support the load. There were lots of complaints about the prefix only search, but they held their ground.

 

I do fancy searches using emacs on the pocket query file, which gives me full regular express searches, but GSAK should also do the trick. Either way, I actually think that's more likely to be what you want than the geocaching.com search, since the web site's search would return every cache everywhere, but a search of a specific database will return only caches in the database's area, which are typically the ones you're really interested in.

 

The wildcard search at

http://project-gc.com/

can do the job and restriction to countries, regions, cache types etc is easily possible there as well.

Everything can be done online and needs no local cache data base.

 

And strangely enough the project-gc site can tolerate the load even though it is essentially a one person private project.

 

Cezanne

[+Astartus]

Thanks for this awesome tip, cezanne. This really did the trick.

I knew about project-gc for some challenge verification tools, but did not know of the search function there.

 

Too bad the gc.com can't do something that simple.