Release Notes (Website: Enhanced Search Results)

[+Dotty_Bird]

This is not enhanced... Can't possibly be as it is less useful than before. 

 

Not to mention the use of US dating rather than what we need for other places. 

 

Come on GC please think before changing things! 

[+trekintime]

I am trying to find caches I've found, placed on certain dates.  Two date fields are now missing: 'Placed on' and 'Found.'  It's now showing two completely blank columns, not even column headings.  I would really like these two items back in the search.

 

The distance field is not accurate.  It shows my closest cache is 506 miles west, but later in the list are caches are within a mile.

[+onepooja]

Hello,

Thanks for providing the feedback and raising concerns, we believe some of the bugs cropped up that were not there during testing; the team will work to resolve as many of these as possible in the upcoming days.

We've fixed the below bugs that have been reported so far:

• Date preferences issues have been fixed and you can see the format of the date from settings is matching to the last found and placed dates columns
• You can see archived caches when viewing a list of a user's Finds and Hides (including your own) 
• 'Map these geocaches' link is working now when the user is searching by region and no more 500 error
• Players can see the distance in miles instead of ft/mt, reverted to the original way

The team is going to work on the below issues:

• Sorting by Geocache name columns
• Figuring out how to show the distance to a cache (from user location) when a user has filtered by a region (should show distance from them, not distance from the middle of the region) 
• whitespacing between columns, this is going to take a little longer as a team is still working on the best possible approach

Again, we really appreciate your patience and passion for our game, I will keep the community updated on the status.

 

[+The A-Team]

2 hours ago, onepooja said:

We've fixed the below bugs that have been reported so far:

• Date preferences issues have been fixed and you can see the format of the date from settings is matching to the last found and placed dates columns
• You can see archived caches when viewing a list of a user's Finds and Hides (including your own) 
• 'Map these geocaches' link is working now when the user is searching by region and no more 500 error
• Players can see the distance in miles instead of ft/mt, reverted to the original way

 

Thanks onepooja. I can confirm that each of the above now works as expected for me. Hopefully the team can squash a bunch of the other bugs in short order.

[+Team Canary]

3 hours ago, onepooja said:

 

Hello,

Thanks for providing the feedback and raising concerns, we believe some of the bugs cropped up that were not there during testing; the team will work to resolve as many of these as possible in the upcoming days.

We've fixed the below bugs that have been reported so far:

• Date preferences issues have been fixed and you can see the format of the date from settings is matching to the last found and placed dates columns
• You can see archived caches when viewing a list of a user's Finds and Hides (including your own) 
• 'Map these geocaches' link is working now when the user is searching by region and no more 500 error
• Players can see the distance in miles instead of ft/mt, reverted to the original way

The team is going to work on the below issues:

• Sorting by Geocache name columns
• Figuring out how to show the distance to a cache (from user location) when a user has filtered by a region (should show distance from them, not distance from the middle of the region) 
• whitespacing between columns, this is going to take a little longer as a team is still working on the best possible approach

Again, we really appreciate your patience and passion for our game, I will keep the community updated on the status.

 

Thanks. 
 

But as with the last update no mention on Personal Note searching. 
 

This is a deal breaker for me and my premium membership. Contact Us times out on my phone. 
 

Please comment on my concern. 

[+VangeRover]

When I do a search of say how many Church Micro series caches that I have found in United Kingdom, I want to be able to see all of them plus the date that I found them plus the D/T all on one screen. I use an IPad and have found over 1400 CMs. 

 

I am trying to do a search of CMs that I found on 25th May 2021 which was an easy task a few days ago but now impossible. When tackling Challenge Caches, I need to search by region and actual date that I found it. It may be that the only way to see if I qualify for a challenge cache is if the CO has written a checker or had it written for them. 

 

In the past I have been able to check through all of my finds but now I can only check 1000 of them. This latest “enhancement” is a truly retrograde step. Do you consult your customers before making wholesale changes?

 

[+me N u]

 

• • 6 hours ago, onepooja said:

     

    (Extract from full post)

     

    • Date preferences issues have been fixed and you can see the format of the date from settings is matching to the last found and placed dates columns

     

Thank you, a small, but important to us, change.

[+Baktrak]

21 hours ago, OusKonNé & Cétyla said:

Can't anymore sort the results list by Geocache name...

This is bad. This was a really useful feature that I used a lot. 

[+GeoJaxx]

When filtering by United Kingdom all caches with the name containing village hall series on a mobile this is the result I get.
- The names are so truncated that the numbers and location are missing so they all have the same name. 

- They are not sorted by home location but some random point in UK (the first one in the list is 150 km from my home) 

- if I chose to change the column from favourites  I can only pick one filter at a time and Difficulty and terrain are separate so no option to see D/T

- no option to see date I found the cache. 
- glad that the search is now separated into tabs of 200 but there are 1200 caches in the series but I can still only see 1000 - why are there only 5 tabs available?. (Which 200 are missing as it is not the furthest from home - so is it a random selection that are not shown?)

 

When I changed the search to from home location rather than United Kingdom with the same name search name contains it bought up a list which was headed ‘date found’ although they appear to be sorted as furthest from home as the first on the list which was actually 879km from home in northern Scotland (I am South coast England).
I then chose to display by closest distance (via 3 dots) and the mileage displayed was in thousands of km. It still did not bring up closest to home and no idea where it sets the distance from (maybe America) 

I have been unable to find a way to sort the list by closest to home at all as it doesn’t seem to recognise my location although it is entered correctly in settings. 

 

I have also noticed when changing the filters via the three dots - if you are on for example distance, click the 3 dots for alternatives but decide you don’t want to change it, there is no option to either abort the search with an X or re choose the one you are already on ( In this example distance) therefore I had to choose another option and then go back again to revert to distance. 

 

please give us the option to use the old search until you can resolve the problems 

[+Isonzo Karst]

Windows, Firefox

On a mapping page, once an error message arises, it cannot be dismissed. I mapped the owned caches of a local. Clicked one of them, map icon is Smiley face, I've found it.  Apparently its archived status throws an error.  No way to get back to the map, except to start over with search, and pay attention from there to not attempt "more info" on anything archived.

[+OusKonNé & Cétyla]

19 hours ago, onepooja said:

We've fixed the below bugs that have been reported so far:

• Date preferences issues have been fixed and you can see the format of the date from settings is matching to the last found and placed dates columns
• You can see archived caches when viewing a list of a user's Finds and Hides (including your own) 
• 'Map these geocaches' link is working now when the user is searching by region and no more 500 error
• Players can see the distance in miles instead of ft/mt, reverted to the original way

 

Thanks onepooja for the follow up!

 

I take this opportunity to report 2 problems with geocachers names including an ampersand.

 

Similar to this bug, some search results are not showing when geocachers name includes an ampersand.

 

For example, if I go to my profile, it is impossible for me to display my found caches.
 

 

If I click on any link above, I get the following result:

 

 

To solve the problem, I have to manually overwrite the URL by replacing:
OusKonNé & Cétyla
by:
OusKonNé+%26+Cétyla

 

Same problem with other geocachers names including an ampersand:
- Mouche & DMen
- Wiseman & Naï
- Etc.

 

Also, what is strange, is that the bug is different when the geocachers name does not contain a space before and after the ampersand.

 

For example, for Casper&Aero, the result will be rather this:

 

 

Here, looks like the processing only considers "Casper" instead of "Casper&Aero"...

 

Regards!

[+famerlor_dragon]

20 hours ago, onepooja said:

You can see archived caches when viewing a list of a user's Finds and Hides (including your own) 

 

Why would you disable this for other searches? I agree that archives caches have no practical values as they can't be found. But they are part of the lore of the game (and part of several mysteries) and, hence, of interest.

[+gjhimages]

I have noticed that with the new search that I am unable to view a geocachers hides.  I get a 0 results.  I have gone into a cachers profile and then clicked Geocaches Owned (All Geocache Hides). I then get the following 0 results.  While other cachers I can see all of their hides. So why the difference from one cacher to another?  I am using Safari and also Chrome with the same results.

 

 

[+02Bhkn]

Usually when things change, there is an option to use the older version - is that possible with the search results?

 

If I search for caches in a state, Is there a way to get the distance to be from me rather than from the center of the state?  That was the old way and I liked it a lot.

[+Gill & Tony]

I just did a search Bungendore, State of New South Wales 16Km radius (In other words I entered Bungendore and selected that from the options given.

 

I have 0ver 3 million caches within that 16Km radius, starting with a bunch in Germany

 

Could this be a bug?   It iis definitely annoying

 

 

[+msrubble]

8 hours ago, gjhimages said:

I have noticed that with the new search that I am unable to view a geocachers hides.  I get a 0 results.  I have gone into a cachers profile and then clicked Geocaches Owned (All Geocache Hides). I then get the following 0 results.  

 

 

I cannot see my own hides! Furthermore, when I click on "Filter," the entire browser window becomes overlaid with gray, and I cannot do anything. The gray overlay also takes over if I type a term in the search box and hit the magnifying glass icon. I can tell it to show me 200 results, and I still get zero.

 

Chrome on Windows 10.

 

This is from my profile.

Edited February 13, 2022 by msrubble

[+msrubble]

OK, now I can see it. I tried mapping it, accidentally made the window wider when I went back, and there was the list. It seems to take several minutes to load even 100 or so caches.

 

Now, I don't know how mobile-friendly it is, but on my laptop, it has                               way                       too                      much       

 

 

 

 

 

           white             space.

 

If I maximize the browser window, which I do not like to do, I can see the difficulty rating, but not terrain, date last found, placement date, or trackables.

[+baer2006]

Now that some bugs are fixed, how about those which I show in the attached screenshot.

• When I change the location in the filter settings window to "Home Location", I get caches in Canada. My home location is in Munich (which is not in Canada )
• Distance for all searches are in miles. That's the same problem as the American format for dates. Please honor the user's settings regarding units and data formats!
• The waste of space is really annoying. On my computer screen, things like D and T rating, last found date, etc. could easily fit on the screen.

[+Isonzo Karst]

https://www.geocaching.com/play/results/?st=GC965C5&oid=-1&ot=geocache&asc=true&sort=distance

enter a GC Code and ask for caches within 10 miles. this defaults to a German location always, and the radius is not respected.  Try GC965C5 - cache in Florida.  Or one of baer2006's caches GC8M001 - which is in Germany, but  a different state. Either way, any GC Code -  image below of Search output.

[+kunarion]

2 hours ago, Isonzo Karst said:

https://www.geocaching.com/play/results/?st=GC965C5&oid=-1&ot=geocache&asc=true&sort=distance

enter a GC Code and ask for caches within 10 miles. this defaults to a German location always, and the radius is not respected.  Try GC965C5 - cache in Florida.  Or one of baer2006's caches GC8M001 - which is in Germany, but  a different state. Either way, any GC Code -  image below of Search output.

 

I see the same thing.  And once the search result appears, if I next click "Clear All" (Filters), it restores my home location.  AND if I next search for "GC965C5" (for example), the search then works fine, but of course the filters are then reset.  It's as if there was some odd filter set when I started, but the Filters look OK.

 

I've gotten similar results for "the whole world and you live in Europe" at times for various filter combinations (or, I guess when filters became un-set), so I use "The Old Search" for most of my Geocaching.  It just works, which is what I look for in a feature.  But I think TPTB are cancelling that.

[+GeoJaxx]

I have tried to search for a GC number using the search bar without filters. The cache is 24km from home in Southern England. The results shown are in Germany. 

[+Ocean Lovers]

1 hour ago, GeoJaxx said:

I have tried to search for a GC number using the search bar without filters. The cache is 24km from home in Southern England. The results shown are in Germany. 

I get the same result when I search with a 10-mile radius around a cache in California.  The result is 3 million caches on a list starting in Germany!  This must be a list of all active caches, worldwide.  The search function has become useless!

[+MartyBartfast]

1 hour ago, GeoJaxx said:

I have tried to search for a GC number using the search bar without filters. The cache is 24km from home in Southern England. The results shown are in Germany. 

Bizarrely I did the same search and it produced the correct list of cacaches (in Southern England) the resulting URL being https://www.geocaching.com/play/results/?st=GC8NQH8&oid=GC8NQH8&ot=geocache&asc=true&sort=distance , but then if I click the magnifying glass on the search window without changing anything then the search is repeated and produces the same list of caches in Germany the URL this time being https://www.geocaching.com/play/results/?st=GC8NQH8&ot=query&asc=true&sort=distance.

 

 

 

If I close the browser tab and repeat the whole process again I get the same result each time.

[+baer2006]

35 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

Bizarrely I did the same search and it produced the correct list of cacaches (in Southern England) the resulting URL being https://www.geocaching.com/play/results/?st=GC8NQH8&oid=GC8NQH8&ot=geocache&asc=true&sort=distance , but then if I click the magnifying glass on the search window without changing anything then the search is repeated and produces the same list of caches in Germany the URL this time being https://www.geocaching.com/play/results/?st=GC8NQH8&ot=query&asc=true&sort=distance.

 

If I close the browser tab and repeat the whole process again I get the same result each time.

I can confirm this.

 

As a side note, the distance display for the first of the two links is interesting:

• The first entry is of course the cache GC8NQH8, which has a distance of zero to itself. However, it's displayed as "NaN km". As a programmer, I know what "NaN" means, and that it's not the true result here .
• The next two entries have distance given in meters ("m"), while all the rest have their distance in miles (also "m").

Seriously, GS: You have to do something about QA in your software development department. The number of bugs in this "upgrade", and their sometimes hilarious nature, is embarrassing.

[+Viajero Perdido]

1 hour ago, baer2006 said:

The next two entries have distance given in meters ("m"), while all the rest have their distance in miles (also "m").

 

American websites that abbreviate miles as "m" are just as confusing to rest-of-world people as dates like 1/2/22 are.

 

"m" is the abbrv for metres (or meters), never miles.

[+niraD]

42 minutes ago, Viajero Perdido said:

"m" is the abbrv for metres (or meters), never miles.

Sorry, but over here, a speed limit of 65mph is 65 miles per hour, not 65 meters per hour.

[+MartyBartfast]

What's the purpose of this "Filtered By" button? Clicking it switches the orientation of the arrow from Up<->Down  or vice versa,  but otherwise it does nothing, is it supposed to?

 

 

[+ChriBli]

20 minutes ago, niraD said:

Sorry, but over here, a speed limit of 65mph is 65 miles per hour, not 65 meters per hour.

So km would be kilomiles then? The abbreviation mph is understood as miles per hour also in the metric world, just as km is understood as kilometers everywhere. Mile is usually abbreviated mi, not m, as far as I understand. Not that they are often confused, especially since one tends to stick to one system of measurement in a list like this.

[+MartyBartfast]

I did mention this briefly previously but this time I collected the evidence: I did a search based on my home location (Southern England), and it returns caches in Alberta, Canada!, then clicking the magnifying glass returns caches in Mauritius.

 

Also the distances on all searches are measured in miles, the distance should honour my chosen settings where I have selected Metric.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 15, 2022 by MartyBartfast

[+niraD]

35 minutes ago, ChriBli said:

So km would be kilomiles then?

What's a "kilomile"?

 

35 minutes ago, ChriBli said:

The abbreviation mph is understood as miles per hour also in the metric world, just as km is understood as kilometers everywhere. Mile is usually abbreviated mi, not m, as far as I understand. Not that they are often confused, especially since one tends to stick to one system of measurement in a list like this.

But "mile" and "miles" have been abbreviated as either "m" or "mi" so both are understood, but people are lazy, so "m" is often used. And in mosts contexts, it's clear whether "m" is referring to miles or meters. No one runs a 100-mile dash, and no one cares how many meters it is between Memphis and Nashville.

[+ChriBli]

13 minutes ago, niraD said:

What's a "kilomile"?

0.008 megafurlong.

[+sernikk]

For some reason, the "Last Found" column is working as "Found On" when looking at caches found by a specific user.

[+barefootjeff]

32 minutes ago, sernikk said:

For some reason, the "Last Found" column is working as "Found On" when looking at caches found by a specific user.

 

I think it's supposed to, but the column really needs to be renamed Found On when displaying that.

[+Viajero Perdido]

Trust me on this.  In metric-land, "m" parses as metres, only and always.  (As a gesture to our American friends, we do understand what mph means; I know it's not consistent.)

 

But if the search gizmo respects the locale preferences (metric: yes), it shouldn't matter. 

[+niraD]

4 hours ago, ChriBli said:

4 hours ago, niraD said:

What's a "kilomile"?

0.008 megafurlong.

Or 9.46e14 nano-smoots...

[+thebruce0]

50mph takes 1h 30min to cover 75mi, costing like $5mil USD per gal (or $50mil CAD per L) in fuel.

ugh

[+barefootjeff]

Having been out on a bit of a caching adventure over the weekend, I thought I'd use the new search functionality to show the caches I found with their D/T rating so I could work out my average D/T for them. This is how I set the filters:

 

 

The first time it came back with every cache on the planet, so I clicked on Filters again and once more set those three fields, none of which it remembered from my first attempt. This time it came back with:

 

 

The Filtered by line shows the three parameters as I set them. Now there may be some cachers who can make 965 finds in a weekend but I'm not one of them. If I go to the list of my Found It logs, it shows that I in fact made eleven finds but unfortunately that list doesn't show the caches' D/T ratings.

 

 

Maybe there's a way to get the information I want from Project-GC or the app, because the website is now useless for even the most basic of searches.

[+Gill & Tony]

A suggestion.

 

Given that the new search is useless, please revert to the old version until the new version is properly tested.

 

I don't mind volunteering as a beta tester, but I feel that we users have been co-opted as alpha testers.

[+zeze1]

@barefootjeff: Challenge accepted. Got 120 hits but the first 11 ones seem to be yours.

[+barefootjeff]

17 minutes ago, zeze1 said:

@barefootjeff: Challenge accepted. Got 120 hits but the first 11 ones seem to be yours.

 

From a bit more experimenting of my own, it looks like the 965 caches it returned are all my finds on caches that aren't archived and sorted by the distance (in miles) from home. That's not what I asked for.

Edited February 14, 2022 by barefootjeff

[+zeze1]

I think that "found after ..." means "found by anyone after ..."

At least that could explain my 120 hits.

"All geocache finds" in your profile should produce the list you're looking for,

with the 11 most recents finds on top.

Edited February 14, 2022 by zeze1

[+ChriBli]

There's more to it than that. If I filter for "found by me" and "found after" 1st of February this year, I get a list of 3,410 caches, clearly I did not find them all this year and most of them not even last year. But most of them were not found by anyone else either after the specified date:

 

Now if I go to my dashboard, geocaches, have found, I get a list of my latest 1,000 found as usual, sorted on the date when I found them. Then I can filter that list on found after and get this:

 

Note the subtle differences in the filter terms (also note that the date is changed to one day earlier than I specified, and that it uses 'm' meaning miles although my preference is metric). If I go back to the general search and add also "found by: ChriBli" in addition to "found by me", I get the same result since none of these caches were archived yet:

 

So apparently "found by me" and "found by: ChriBli" is not the same thing, even though that is my nick, and how it filters for found date when I leave out the latter remains a mystery.

 

[+zeze1]

[+ChriBli]

54 minutes ago, HHL said:

Apparently HQ engineers used join=or instead of join=and when filtering their database.

Well, I don't know.

(found by me (ChriBli)) AND (found after 220131) = 3,410

(found by me (ChriBli)) AND (found after 220131) AND (found by ChriBli) = 7

(found after 220131) AND (found by ChriBli) = 724

 

It's more like the last filter term is not taken into account at all. 3,410 may very well be my found total excluding archived caches. However, 724 seems a bit low for the worldwide number of caches found in the last two weeks. Did a quick search for (found after 220131) AND (placed before 220214) and that resulted in 3,325,010 caches. Go figure. 

[+ChriBli]

19 minutes ago, HHL said:

Your literally AND is not the same as a logical AND in script lingo.

So what is the difference? My AND above was meant to indicate that I expect all the search results to fulfil both the condition to the left and to the right of it.

[+t.a.folk]

Searching for caches found by a player with & in their cache name, does not take one to their profile. On one player it returns "We couldn't find any caches that matched your search.

Try adjusting your filters and searching again or visit our FAQs for help."

Also a player with another player with an & takes one to a completely different player seems to truncate any after the &.

 

It weren't broken..... it is now.

[+onepooja]

Hello,
Thanks for your feedback over the weekend. After we fixed some of the most impactful bugs last Friday, you all have let us know about some new bugs you’ve experienced. We have reviewed all the feedback that came in over the weekend, and our engineering team is in the progress of fixing those as soon as possible. We are working on the below list of issues:

1. Users can’t search for their hides or cannot search or filter on usernames with ‘&’ character
2. Searching for specific GC code from LIHP returning incorrect search results
3. Filtering on home location via filter panel from existing search resulting incorrect search results
4. Search results not correctly honoring imperial/metric
5. Inconsistent results when filtering on found by and found date filters

Again, we appreciate your patience and passion for our game, I will keep the community updated on the status.

Edited February 14, 2022 by onepooja

[+Cats4us]

Agree with all comments about this search page not being ready for rollout. The previous page was more useful by far. Preferably, roll search view back to what it was, this is incredibly disappointing. Please at least make an option to use the “old” page view as done on so many other GC interface changes.

[+famerlor_dragon]

21 hours ago, ChriBli said:

So apparently "found by me" and "found by: ChriBli" is not the same thing, even though that is my nick, and how it filters for found date when I leave out the latter remains a mystery.

 

"found by me" is the parameter "hf" and "found by: user" is "fb=user". They should do the same thing, but only the letter enables displaying archived caches. So I suspect they have tied further rights to those parameters which is probably the reason this screwed up so bad.

Edited February 15, 2022 by famerlor_dragon

[+famerlor_dragon]

Usability

 

If you accidentally clicked the title of your (often) single attributes column in the results page, you need to scroll outside the white box to make it go away.

 

Please make the outside of the white box clickable to abort. This is much more intuitive. Took me an accidental scroll to notice that I do not have to go back an forth with another attribute.