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The new search function


Derb522002

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The behavior that you are seeing has nothing to do with your browser or where you live. You're making an assumption (not that you're wrong for doing so) that entering a term in the search box is going to do a search for caches with that term (Saltwater) in the cache name. The search box basically does one thing. It's used to determine a set of lat/long coordinates or a bounded region (i.e. a State or Country) so that it can display a list of caches relative to that location.

 

I am slowly getting accustomed to the work-arounds for the new search. Sometimes I have to resort to the classic search. It would really be wise for the gurus at Groundspeak to incorporate the older functionalities from the classic search into the flash and pomp of the new search, giving a really user friendly cache search engine.They still need to fix the snafu in the "Geocache name contains" - it works only about half the time. Also, I'd like to see the search radius brought back to 100 miles. What would really be nice is to allow the user to input more precise locations such as the city or county or even coordinates from where a center-point will be and to be able to input the radius. For example if I want to search in a 50 mile radius of Nashville, TN, I can't do it. The reason is that maybe I'd like to see what's available in southern Kentucky along I-24 or I-65.

 

Bottom line, the new search still needs a lot of work.

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What would really be nice is to allow the user to input more precise locations such as the city or county or even coordinates from where a center-point will be and to be able to input the radius. For example if I want to search in a 50 mile radius of Nashville, TN, I can't do it.

 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you can input a precise location as the center point, e.g. this is the search centered on Nashville, achieved by entering Nashville in the search box, then using the filters to extend the range from the default of 16km up to the maximum of 50km:

 

https://www.geocaching.com/play/search/@36.16589,-86.78444?origin=nashville,+tn&ot=3&g=313943&radius=50km

 

Though the limit of the radius is 50km (~32 miles).

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The behavior that you are seeing has nothing to do with your browser or where you live. You're making an assumption (not that you're wrong for doing so) that entering a term in the search box is going to do a search for caches with that term (Saltwater) in the cache name. The search box basically does one thing. It's used to determine a set of lat/long coordinates or a bounded region (i.e. a State or Country) so that it can display a list of caches relative to that location.

 

I am slowly getting accustomed to the work-arounds for the new search. Sometimes I have to resort to the classic search. It would really be wise for the gurus at Groundspeak to incorporate the older functionalities from the classic search into the flash and pomp of the new search, giving a really user friendly cache search engine.They still need to fix the snafu in the "Geocache name contains" - it works only about half the time. Also, I'd like to see the search radius brought back to 100 miles. What would really be nice is to allow the user to input more precise locations such as the city or county or even coordinates from where a center-point will be and to be able to input the radius. For example if I want to search in a 50 mile radius of Nashville, TN, I can't do it. The reason is that maybe I'd like to see what's available in southern Kentucky along I-24 or I-65.

 

Bottom line, the new search still needs a lot of work.

 

I agree, I feel like it is harder to search for more specific things in the new search than the old one, in which it was easy to just type in an area or even the cache name or name of the hider and it worked 100% of the time, no exceptions. The new search is still in development though and will get better over time! :laughing:

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The behavior that you are seeing has nothing to do with your browser or where you live. You're making an assumption (not that you're wrong for doing so) that entering a term in the search box is going to do a search for caches with that term (Saltwater) in the cache name. The search box basically does one thing. It's used to determine a set of lat/long coordinates or a bounded region (i.e. a State or Country) so that it can display a list of caches relative to that location.

 

I am slowly getting accustomed to the work-arounds for the new search.

 

What I described isn't a work-around. It's just how the new search works.

 

Sometimes I have to resort to the classic search. It would really be wise for the gurus at Groundspeak to incorporate the older functionalities from the classic search into the flash and pomp of the new search, giving a really user friendly cache search engine.

 

As I see it, one of the biggest flaws with the new search is that it's not intuitive and doesn't provide the feedback that would be useful to let a user know that they're not using it correctly. Even though the main search box has "City, state, country, GC code.." many still seem to assume that the can enter a cache name. It's not clearly described that whatever one enters into the box is just used to derive a location as a center point for the search with a 10 mile (default) radius. It's not intuitive that one could just leave the search box blank and go directly to the "Add Filters" page to find caches in a region (state, country) rather than use a "radius" search. I have suggested that instead of the "canned" searches (Events in your Area) it would have been more useful to put up some screen casts which showed how to use the new search interface to create an "Events in your Area" search

 

When some people had trouble getting results they want others have posted URLs that will produce the results (in some cases, constructing a link by hand, rather than from the search page). While that may be helpful to the search results one user wants, it would be more useful to describe *how* the search results were obtained.

 

 

 

They still need to fix the snafu in the "Geocache name contains" - it works only about half the time.

 

 

Could you elaborate on this? Is the behavior repeatable? Can you give an example where it fails?

 

 

Also, I'd like to see the search radius brought back to 100 miles. What would really be nice is to allow the user to input more precise locations such as the city or county or even coordinates from where a center-point will be and to be able to input the radius. For example if I want to search in a 50 mile radius of Nashville, TN, I can't do it. The reason is that maybe I'd like to see what's available in southern Kentucky along I-24 or I-65.

 

Bottom line, the new search still needs a lot of work.

 

On day one when the new search was released I mentioned that the 30 mile limit for a radius search was inadequate. Maybe for a place like Seattle or other large urban area with lots of caches, a 30 mile limit will produce a long list of caches, but for those that don't have the luxury of having a gazillion caches nearby the 30 mile limit is insufficient. BTW, the old search would use 100 miles as a default but one could increase that up to 250 miles (if I recall). The new search *does* allow one to enter lat/long coordinates.

 

The other major flaw with the new search is that one can't generate search results with a list of caches and then download the results as a PQ or in any other way to download caches in bulk. While one can "view results on map" apparently the map page can't handle the new filters available with the new search (e.g. caches which corrected coordinates). Sure, I can see all of the caches in NY for which I have corrected coordinates, but unless I can download that list to my GPS it's not very useful.

 

 

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Yikes! I thought I could read this thread and figure out the search tool I have been attempting to use for the past many months. But 300+ posts are too many to go through. I guess I am not the only one with problems. Maybe someone could just point me to instructions to find the page for specific caches. For example there is a cache I need to log in Oregon called "Welcome To Fourmile" No matter what I try the search tool will not come up with the cache. If I know the exact name of a cache, or even just part of it, there must be a way that I am missing to use this new search tool to easily find the cache page. Thanks.

 

on edit: - I know I can click the link and just use the old search function which works great. But if the new search is a permanent change, I would like to be able to use it to find specific caches.

Edited by Cheminer Will
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I had not seen that link. It really does a good job explaining it. After several tries following the steps and making sure I finally got all the rules obeyed correctly, I was able to get the search to pull up the "Welcome To Fourmile" cache. Hard to imagine the average cacher using this new search function successfully without reading through the A-Team's tutorial and even then it was not easy... Especially compared to the old search tool which I had already used to find the cache. There all I did was type the cache name into the "Cache Starts with" field and up came the cache. But I have bookmarked the A-Team's site so that if the old search tool is ever taken away, I can work with the new one. Thanks for posting the link.

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The new map search is a huge step backwards! Now you can't drag the map and have it repopulate with icons if you drag it out of the area it opened in. The way it was,was just fine. They way it is now is useless to me. Also if I click the clear search filters button all I get is a "page not found".

Just click on a cache in the furthest reaches of the 30 mile or 10 mile search. Open to that cache and then click on the state right below the Favorites button...Presto/Chango, from there you can search the whole U.S. without any limit on circle radius.

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Looking at the new search, is it possible to search via attribute? As a Premium member, it would be nice to pull up only Park n Grabs for the kids, etc. Is that a current feature, to search via attributes? I've checked on my laptop, iPhone and iPad and can't see it. Thank you for your time.

 

No, but you can do that with a Pocket Query, and use the "preview PQ" link to do a search.

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Looking at the new search, is it possible to search via attribute? As a Premium member, it would be nice to pull up only Park n Grabs for the kids, etc. Is that a current feature, to search via attributes? I've checked on my laptop, iPhone and iPad and can't see it. Thank you for your time.

 

No, but you can do that with a Pocket Query, and use the "preview PQ" link to do a search.

 

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I thought I had seen something that would do that. Appreciate your help! :-)

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Looking at the new search, is it possible to search via attribute? As a Premium member, it would be nice to pull up only Park n Grabs for the kids, etc. Is that a current feature, to search via attributes? I've checked on my laptop, iPhone and iPad and can't see it. Thank you for your time.

 

No, but you can do that with a Pocket Query, and use the "preview PQ" link to do a search.

 

Yep, I have one PQ I use for map views :) Make a filter adjustment, save and view the preview on the map - no need to even run the PQ for the day. It's effectively a live search. AND you can bookmark the map preview link if you want, and it'll always be current.

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