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Issue with Searching By "GEOCACHE NAME CONTAINS ..."


GeoMonkeyTiger!

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I noticed what seems to be a bug in the "Search" function on the Geocaching website.  

 

The Georgia Geocachers Association is currently doing a challenge to find caches with names that have certain words relating to New Year's.  One of the words you can use is "Ring" (as in "ring in the new year").

 

I went to the search tool, entered my home state (Georgia) and clicked in the "GEOCACHE NAME CONTAINS ..." field and enter "Ring".  When I do this I get 45 results.  The results not only include caches with the four-letter word "RING", but also "RINGER" and "RINGS".  

 

However, when I use project-GC to do the search, again limiting to Georgia and searching on "Contains Ring", I get 183 results.  In addition to the RING/RINGER/RINGS I get from the geocaching page search, I also get "sPRING", "bordeRING", "ManufactuRING" and other variants of the word "RING".  

This is the way I would expect the search results to return for "Geocache Name Contains" the word "RING".  I don't know if this is a bug in the search function or maybe if designed, could be labeled more clearly?  I just know I definitely didn't  get the results I expected and a few others I was working with had the same issue...

 

Note I get the same results whether I use the "new" search page or the "classic" page.  I've included screenshots below of my search criteria and sample results....

 

Thanks for taking a look!

Ring Search 1.JPG

Ring Search 2.JPG

Ring Search 3.JPG

Ring Search 4.JPG

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How do you search? Because it doesn't work here:  https://www.geocaching.com/play/search

Every time I try it brings up nothing related to the name I put in. The first attempt supplied caches in Pennsylvania. I tried again and this time the result were caches in Alabama. I'm in Australia. So, I presume I should use another place to search by cache name.

 

Ignore all this. Just figured it out.

Edited by Goldenwattle
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12 hours ago, The Snowdog said:

Interesting that in the examples you give the geocaching.com page finds caches that begin with the search term or have it somewhere in the middle, but misses names that end with the search term. Can you confirm this?

 

Actually, the issue seems to be that if a word doesn't begin with RING (So, "RINGer, or "RINGs" for example), it will come back, but if the letters are anywhere else, it does not return.

When I search for "new" (another word on our challenge list), I get hits on the Geocaching page for "NEW", "NEWton", "NEWest", and "NEWer".  But, on the project-GC page, I get these results, plus, "ReNEWed", and "stoNEWall"...

 

Note that project-GC returned a "NEWborn" and "NEWs" that the geocaching page did not. so I'm no longer really sure what the difference is!

 

 

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14 hours ago, The A-Team said:

Based on what's described here, that filter field should be labelled "Geocache name contains words starting with..." to better reflect how it actually works. The current label indicating that it does a simple "contains" search is inaccurate.

 

Or better yet, implement the search  such that it properly uses regular expressions.

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I know this is old, but I'm still seeing this behavior?  

Is this considered a bug?  Is it being fixed?  Is there a different way to enter the search to make it pick up embedded letters (%ring%, or *ring* or some variant)?  Is there any way on the geocaching website this search can be done?  Or do I just need to use project-GC for this?


Thanks!
 

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