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Where is the old search?


Rhodo Dendron

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You can still download a page of 20 caches in .LOC format from the "classic" search results pages. One easy way is to find one cache you are interested in, open that listing and click on the link to show all nearby caches that you haven't found.

No, no, no. I don't need a list of nearbys. I need the search feature as it was with all the filters and an option to download the result.

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Let's keep this "How do I..." forum thread focused on downloads. I have moved some good, generalized comments and critiques into the Release Notes thread.

 

Rhodo Dendron, I'm afraid I didn't understand your response. What sort of search results list are you looking to generate so that you can download the results as .loc files? Also, have you ever used pocket queries?

Edited by Keystone
to indicate that some posts were moved
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Let's keep this "How do I..." forum thread focused on downloads. I have moved some good, generalized comments and critiques into the Release Notes thread.

 

Rhodo Dendron, I'm afraid I didn't understand your response. What sort of search results list are you looking to generate so that you can download the results as .loc files? Also, have you ever used pocket queries?

 

I'd like to generate a list of all mysteries containing an X in the name, difficulty 1-3, terrain 1-4, not disabled, no tree climbing, found by user A, B or C, owned by user X, Y or Z, where I've saved a personal note and/or changed the cooords. And I'd like to download this list as .gpx.

 

Ok, that's not exactly the old search, but I had a dream when I heard a new search is coming up....

 

Why not give us full access to the query? Why not give us the power? Limit a result to 1000 records if the amount of data is the problem.

 

And why maintaining these two seperate worlds of search on the one hand and pocket queries on the other hand? It's one and the same thing.

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The ability to download a GPX file with the results of the new search tool has been promised by Geocaching HQ as a future enhancement. In the meantime, pocket queries are closest for what you describe, and that would have been the case three months ago as well - minus things like "just caches where I've added corrected coordinates." The new search tool DOES add the ability to search based on corrected coordinates, in response to user feedback over the years like your own request last month.

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The ability to download a GPX file with the results of the new search tool has been promised by Geocaching HQ as a future enhancement. In the meantime, pocket queries are closest for what you describe, and that would have been the case three months ago as well - minus things like "just caches where I've added corrected coordinates." The new search tool DOES add the ability to search based on corrected coordinates, in response to user feedback over the years like your own request last month.

 

Yes, but without the ability to download all the power of the new search tool makes limited sense to me. That's why I questioned the strict seperation of search tool and pocket queries.

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But Pocket Queries are a powerful search tool in themselves. You can easily do many of the searches that people are complaining about with them. And if you can't, it is not that difficult to bookmark the results and create a pq based on the search results and you will then have a gpx file. What puzzles me about this fuss about the new search is the apparent determination to only use one tool for everything. There is a link on everyone's profile to the nearest unfounded caches from their home location. You can find unfounded caches in your state or another with a saved pq that you can preview any time you want. You can check your friends finds by following the link on your friends page. What the new advanced search does is allow to some things you couldn't do before easily on the site- most notably search by cache name and search for caches not found by someone else.

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Why not do it all in one place? Probably because they are trying to be sure they don't release something that will make the site unusable.

Groundspeak is a small company which has been coping with a huge growth curve with limited resources and probably not a compensating increase in income. Many of the new players do so using an application deliberately designed to provide premium access without compensating Groundspeak at all.

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Many of the new players do so using an application deliberately designed to provide premium access without compensating Groundspeak at all.

If you're hinting about c:geo, it does NOT give you PM access when you're not a PM.

 

----

 

Why not do it all in one place? Because they still want to give added benefit to PM's above regular members. PQ's - essentially a "find, then download the results easily" - are PMO. Search results are for everyone.

 

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it is there.

 

Has it been mentioned in this thread that they are still developing a download option for the found set? Perhaps it should have been fully developed before the new search was released, but at least it IS in development.

Edited by TriciaG
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Let's keep this "How do I..." forum thread focused on downloads. I have moved some good, generalized comments and critiques into the Release Notes thread.

 

Rhodo Dendron, I'm afraid I didn't understand your response. What sort of search results list are you looking to generate so that you can download the results as .loc files? Also, have you ever used pocket queries?

 

I'd like to generate a list of all mysteries containing an X in the name, difficulty 1-3, terrain 1-4, not disabled, no tree climbing, found by user A, B or C, owned by user X, Y or Z, where I've saved a personal note and/or changed the cooords. And I'd like to download this list as .gpx.

 

Ok, that's not exactly the old search, but I had a dream when I heard a new search is coming up....

 

Why not give us full access to the query? Why not give us the power? Limit a result to 1000 records if the amount of data is the problem.

 

And why maintaining these two seperate worlds of search on the one hand and pocket queries on the other hand? It's one and the same thing.

 

For tat there are two third party apps: gsak and project-gc.

 

Until GS decide to add download these will do the job.

 

Although I am not sure they can handle all your restrictions they will get most.

Edited by Walts Hunting
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Many of the new players do so using an application deliberately designed to provide premium access without compensating Groundspeak at all.

If you're hinting about c:geo, it does NOT give you PM access when you're not a PM.

 

----

 

Why not do it all in one place? Because they still want to give added benefit to PM's above regular members. PQ's - essentially a "find, then download the results easily" - are PMO. Search results are for everyone.

 

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it is there.

 

Has it been mentioned in this thread that they are still developing a download option for the found set? Perhaps it should have been fully developed before the new search was released, but at least it IS in development.

 

From what I've read in the Help Book - Apps section, app users get an awful lot more than they used to.

 

If someone was paying for the Groundspeak app, I'm not sure that paying for PM would be worthwhile, unless they become hardcore cachaholics, wanting those PQ's and favorite points perks.

 

 

B.

Edited by Pup Patrol
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But why not give us *one* powerful query screen with all the filters one can imagine and a switch to decide whether to get the result as a list, see it on the map or download it as a gpx file?

 

That's easier said than done. Developing a robust search engine that can predict all the possible ways someone might want to use it is hard.

 

 

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From what I've read in the Help Book - Apps section, app users get an awful lot more than they used to.

 

If someone was paying for the Groundspeak app, I'm not sure that paying for PM would be worthwhile, unless they become hardcore cachaholics, wanting those PQ's and favorite points perks.

 

The other advantage of Premium Membership are the PMO caches. When I was a Basic Member, we went caching in a park that had 3 caches. As we walked, I thought "these are nice trails and there are so many places where caches could be hidden, why aren't there more caches around here?". I was looking at that same area after becoming a PM and saw a couple smileys amidst a bunch of green circles. There were 8 PMO caches along the trail where we'd found 3 non-PMO caches.

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I tried going into the search feature...and entered "Search only in" Italy. Then I went to the map...it zoomed into Italy showing all sorts of caches. I went to Verona (Veneto)...and there were no caches there.

 

However if I go in from the main page, selecting the map, zooming out, and then in on Italy; specifically Verona (Veneto), I find over thirty caches in the area:

 

L'ARENA di VERONA by Fedeb | GC3PC0W | Veneto, Italy

 

[bT] Piazza Bra by Bubi Team | GC1X2RV | Veneto, Italy

 

Non solo Giulietta e Romeo by Elena e Martino | GC4RJCN | Veneto, Italy

 

etc. How is it that they are not there in the New Search?

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Groundspeak is a small company which has been coping with a huge growth curve with limited resources and probably not a compensating increase in income.

 

project-gc is not even a company and much smaller. Yet the site provides a lot of functionality - of course they concentrate on functionality and not on colourful designs that change often and on marketing etc

 

In my opinion, it would have been more logical to build in the new features into the PQ system (which offers all the other aspects already including download).

Edited by cezanne
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Groundspeak is a small company which has been coping with a huge growth curve with limited resources and probably not a compensating increase in income.

project-gc is not even a company and much smaller. Yet the site provides a lot of functionality - of course they concentrate on functionality and not on colourful designs that change often and on marketing etc

I think this is comparing apples and oranges:

  • Project-GC runs queries against the data stored and maintained by Groundspeak, so certainly it doesn't need as many resources as GS. Database and server management requires resources.
  • Project-GC data is not live, which means there are a lot of server resources that it doesn't need to worry about. Reading the "Site Info" page of Project-GC...data for caches with new found logs is usually 24-36 hours behind, while data for other caches could be up to 30 days (non-archived) or 90 days (archived) behind.
  • There's no indication that I've seen regarding how many people at GS are working solely on the Search feature, or how many people are working on Project-GC. The founder of Project-GC is the main developer, which mean there are other devs. How can a staffing comparison be done between GS and Project-GC without knowing how many full-time people are being used at each?
  • The interface for Project-GC is also not intuitive and the functionality is very different than the GC.com Search page. Want to search for a cache that has 'snoopy' in the cache name, or looking for Multi caches in your area that you haven't found yet? How would those searches be done in Project-GC?

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[*]The interface for Project-GC is also not intuitive and the functionality is very different than the GC.com Search page.

 

In any case how project-gc and other sites (like aj-gps.net a site for Austria with a single person taking care of it without taking a single cent) look like is very close to how I prefer a tool to look like. Concentrate on functionality and keep the number of mouse clicks, colours etc small and use the space in an effective manner, etc.

 

Of course the sites serve different purposes. They definitely deal in a different manner with user requests and needs.

 

Groundspeak has turned into a very big machinery and only a very small part of the effort is spent on effective functionality and most is spent elsewhere (which is the point I tried to make). If I want apples, I do not care about the offers for oranges to stay with your apples vs oranges comparison.

 

What the new search tool offers to basic members is ridiculous.

Edited by cezanne
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project-gc is not even a company

This is false. While certainly smaller than Groundspeak, Project-GC is definitely an endeavor that accepts money. (And an endeavor that couldn't provide its core services without the data it gets from Groundspeak.)

 

 

Groundspeak has turned into a very big machinery and only a very small part of the effort is spent on effective functionality

 

This is also false. More than 40% of Groundspeak employees are developers working on functionality. Also, one could argue that a company of fewer than 80 employees does not qualify as a "very big machinery." But that's your opinion.

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project-gc is not even a company

This is false. While certainly smaller than Groundspeak, Project-GC is definitely an endeavor that accepts money. (And an endeavor that couldn't provide its core services without the data it gets from Groundspeak.)

 

I should have been more precise. The developper of GSAK also takes money. I do not regard him as a company in the sense I had in mind either.

 

 

 

Groundspeak has turned into a very big machinery and only a very small part of the effort is spent on effective functionality

 

This is also false. More than 40% of Groundspeak employees are developers working on functionality. Also, one could argue that a company of fewer than 80 employees does not qualify as a "very big machinery." But that's your opinion.

 

I did not write big company. I compared to what Groundspeak concentrated about in the early years. I guess when you write about functionality you include layout and things like that which I did not meant when writing about functionality.

E.g. providing souvenirs and doing the coding that they get awarded is not what I regard as functionality either.

 

As the search is regarded I would be far more happy with an sql like query system than with whatever types of colourful interfaces etc (regardless of whether they are intuitive or not - which is not something I care about much).

 

I compared to sites like project-gc on intent (aj-gps.net would even have been a better example and takes no money at all, but it is hardly known outside of my country) - the approach behind those is very much different. They concentrate on what can be done and not the whereabouts (which is not appealing to everyone of course).

 

Moreover as a side topic, project-gc offers quite a lot of search functionality to non paying users which is not any longer the case for gc.com even though the creator of project-gc is not committed to a historic promise about what to offer for non paying users. And this brings me back to the question that remained unanswered so far about the new search tool, namely why this radical move has been made with regard to

taking away from basic members all the useful parts of the search. Of course an answer of the type that this is not a question that will ever be answered in public would be ok for me to. The question is a sincere open question.

Edited by cezanne
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PQ's and Project-GC are all well and good as a way to get information, but I would like to know what GroundSpeaks time frame is to when the option to select a subset of my search results will be available. Even though the new search works quite well, the old search had the functionality to click on the result set and down load them in bulk.

 

What is the ETA on this feature being restored?

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