Google Maps links no longer working

[+gasbottle]

Suddenly today the link provided in each listing page to Google Maps seems not to work.

The URL in the link is now of the form http://maps.google.com/maps?q=S 41° 04.336 E 175° 09.072 (GC7HP9W)+ which includes the cache GC code. Clicking these links causes Google Maps to fail with a 'No result...' message.

Removing the parentheses, GC code and '+' seems to work: 

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=S 41° 04.336 E 175° 09.072

This is on an Android Tablet running Android 7. Clicking the link on this device opens the Google Maps app, rather than loading the Google Maps web page.

 

Edited February 5, 2018 by gasbottle

[+HHL]

Seems not to be a website but an Android issue as the links works pretty smooth here with Win10 and Firefox.

Hans

[+gasbottle]

20 minutes ago, HHL said:

Seems not to be a website but an Android issue as the links works pretty smooth here with Win10 and Firefox.

Hans

Perhaps, perhaps not. This wasn't a problem a few days ago (don't know how many days, but within the last week). Maybe it's a glitch with a Maps update (9.70.1) which was released on 29th January.

Edited February 5, 2018 by gasbottle

[+gasbottle]

This is definitely a web site problem. It affects https://coord.info/GC7HP9W or  https://coord.info/GC7HMGR, but not https://coord.info/GC7H9DH.

Caches with corrected coordinates seem unaffected, other newer caches have the GC code appended, although that might be because the local browser cache has older copies of the pages it's using for caches I've looked at before.

I can't see why the web site would give different links dependent on the browser or platform.

It's late here. I'll investigate again tomorrow.

[+HHL]

Those three caches are definitely open correctly wirh Google Maps. :-) IE: The website gives working urls.
Conclusion: no website issue - issue with your app/unit something.
 

Edited February 5, 2018 by HHL

[+gasbottle]

17 hours ago, HHL said:

Those three caches are definitely open correctly wirh Google Maps. :-) IE: The website gives working urls.
Conclusion: no website issue - issue with your app/unit something.
 

This is a problem that occurs using the web site on my Android Tablet that occurs this week, and did not occur last week. I'd hoped for something more constructive than this.

 

[+hzoi]

On 2/5/2018 at 4:37 AM, gasbottle said:

This is definitely a web site problem. It affects https://coord.info/GC7HP9W or  https://coord.info/GC7HMGR, but not https://coord.info/GC7H9DH.

I have no issues pulling up the Google maps for any of those geocaches using a desktop, Windows 10, and both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Could your tablet causing issues by asking for a mobile version of Google Maps?

[+gasbottle]

5 hours ago, hzoi said:

I have no issues pulling up the Google maps for any of those geocaches using a desktop, Windows 10, and both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Could your tablet causing issues by asking for a mobile version of Google Maps?

I've had some time to investigate further. I don't have a problem on my desktop PC with Win10 and Firefox. The problem occurs on both my Android Tablet,(Android 7) and my Galaxy S5 phone, Android 6, and the problem has started occurring in the last week. Both are running Google Maps 9.70.1

You are correct that the Android devices load the Google Maps app rather than loading the Maps web page. As far as I know they've always done this, so something else has changed in the last week.

The URLs appearing on the web site include the coordinates in the query string. For most cache listings they also include the cache GC code in parentheses. This seems to be where the trouble is. For caches with corrected coordinates the GC code and parentheses are omitted, and nether phone nor tablet has a problem loading the correct map.

So, for a cache with no corrected coordinates I get a URL like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=S%2041%C2%B0%2012.250%20E%20174%C2%B0%2053.100%20%28GC7D6WV%29+

which decodes to

https://www.google.com/maps?q=S+41°+12.250+E+174°+53.100+(GC7D6WV)+

But for a cache with corrected coordinates I get this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=S%2041%C2%B0%2006.812%20E%20175%C2%B0%2005.555+

or

https://www.google.com/maps?q=S+41°+06.812+E+175°+05.555+

It seems, then, that the web site is appending the GC code to the query string. This works for a desktop browser, (and perhaps for a browser based map on the tablet), but the Google Maps app now fails to parse the coordinates correctly. It seems that Google Maps was updated on 29th January, which would tally with the start of the problem.

I don't know why the GC web site appends the GC code. It's not documented in this form as an option for Google Maps. It works but is ignored by the Maps web site, but the app is fussier. The solution is fairly obvious: don't append the GC code to the query string.

How do I go about reporting this as a bug?

 

[+hzoi]

28 minutes ago, gasbottle said:

How do I go about reporting this as a bug?

I think you have by posting it here.  If you wanted to draw more attention, you could also contact the help center and reference this thread to see if you can entice a lackey to stop by, in case they weren't tracking.

[+thebruce0]

You can also prepend the thread title with [BUG] or some such to draw attention to it.

I also noticed the google maps app handling requests differently on mobile. I built the habit of prepending "loc:" to coordinates to force google to pinpoint just the coordinates (instead of nearest road/trail).  That now returns "No results". So I think they're finally treating raw coordinate queries as intended. Previously, the query may have ignored the GC code suffix, now it's including it and finding no match for the whole string.

Point for HQ developers: Any link to google maps by coordinate throughout gc.com should be fixed to have only the raw coordinates in the query search string.

[+gasbottle]

Bump. Any movement on this?