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Find nearby caches that I haven't found.... Not working correctly


tomturtle

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This evening I have clicked on the link from several cache pages  that says "Find nearby caches that I haven't found.... and I have been getting strange results.  It does not in fact show me the closest caches that I haven't found, but shows some that are 5 or 10 miles away.  I use this link all the time, so this would appear to be a recent problem.  Please investigate and correct the problem.

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Additional info:  In some cases, it appears to be defaulting to my home location as a starting point and not showing me the caches that are near the cache I am clicking the link off of.  If I choose a cache that is much farther from home, it shows caches in that area, but the mileage of how far away it is appears to be using my home coordinates.  This is not how it has worked in the past and is not very useful, since I want to see the caches that are closest to the cache that I clicked the link off of.

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1 minute ago, tomturtle said:

Additional info:  In some cases, it appears to be defaulting to my home location as a starting point and not showing me the caches that are near the cache I am clicking the link off of.  If I choose a cache that is much farther from home, it shows caches in that area, but the mileage of how far away it is appears to be using my home coordinates.  This is not how it has worked in the past and is not very useful, since I want to see the caches that are closest to the cache that I clicked the link off of.

 

Yes, I'm seeing something similar using those links from cache pages. It seems to be returning caches within 16km of the specified cache but now sorts them by distance from my home location.

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I use the “nearest cache to” feature all the time when I’m caching, I like to pick a spot or special cache and then put the 10 or 20 closest caches on a list to find. I also use it to keep track of the nearest caches to my cache centroid. This really risks upsetting my entire caching mojo, I hope it gets fixed soon! The best workaround I’ve found is to reset my home location every time I do a “nearest cache” search which is pretty time-consuming. 

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Is anyone else encountering issues the last couple of days with searches on the website?  I notice in particular when I search using specific coordinates in the home page search bar that the issue arises.  I also notice a problem when using the "find all nearby caches that I haven't found" button on all cache pages.  The results sometimes seem to return caches closest to my home coordinates, but sometimes it returns other random results that I can't even guess what it's doing.  I use these features quite regularly and am used to them returning all the closest caches to the coordinates I search or the closest caches to the cache whose page I've clicked the button on.  

 

As am example, if I hit the "find all nearby caches that I haven't found" button on GC90F0Z, the top result is GC2JJ9P, when the closest cache on the map is clearly GC90CVT.  

 

 

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1 hour ago, m0bean said:

Is anyone else encountering issues the last couple of days with searches on the website?  I notice in particular when I search using specific coordinates in the home page search bar that the issue arises.  I also notice a problem when using the "find all nearby caches that I haven't found" button on all cache pages.  The results sometimes seem to return caches closest to my home coordinates, but sometimes it returns other random results that I can't even guess what it's doing.  I use these features quite regularly and am used to them returning all the closest caches to the coordinates I search or the closest caches to the cache whose page I've clicked the button on.  

 

As am example, if I hit the "find all nearby caches that I haven't found" button on GC90F0Z, the top result is GC2JJ9P, when the closest cache on the map is clearly GC90CVT.  

 

 

https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/index.php?/topic/385889-find-nearby-caches-that-i-havent-found-not-working-correctly/

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In der Suche nach Geocaches ist momentan ein Fehler drin. Bei einem Filter Location-Search bei beliebiger Position werden nur Geocaches angezeigt und Entfernungen, als würde ich von den Home-Koordinaten suchen. Beispiel-Link gekürzt: https://www.geocaching.com/play/results/?st=[hier die Koordinaten]

Wenn ich nach Caches aus einer anderen Region suche, erhalte ich das gleiche Ergebnis. Irgendwo gab es da bei einem Update ein Fehler.

Vergleich: Bei der alten Suche gemäß https://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?[hier die Koordinaten]  wird alles noch richtig angezeigt.

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Yup...I just went looking to see if other people were reporting this.  Glad to know I'm not the only one with this glitch and that the higher-ups are looking into it.  The nearby caches I haven't found option is one I use frequently when planning out a geocaching jaunt.

 

Merci, Oh Great Geocaching HQ Engineers!!  :-)

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when searching for caches from the main search page with coordinates the results are not correct, when searching with coordinates from one of my own caches nearby it shows the results based om my home coords, when I search with the coords from my cache in Switzerland I expect my cache to be the first result, in stead the result start with a cache about 16 kilometers away....

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We experienced the bug of "search from coordinates" a couple weeks ago and came to the forums at the time, where we noted that others had reported the problem (here) so we didn't chime in.  A day later, we were glad to see when a Lackey acknowleged the problem and indicated it would be elevated to the technical team. 

 

We've been surprised, though, that the bug still persists, as we run into the problem every day when trying to plan a geocache outing, so it seems like a comparatively high priority issue to us.  Looks like there hasn't been an update from a Lackey in nearly a week, although admittedly the Thanksgiving holiday is in there.

 

In any case, we're just adding our posting to this thread in case the priority of an issue like this being fixed has any relation to the number of people who post that it is a problem for them -- this problem makes it more difficult to plan going geocaching!

 

Thanks, GC lackeys, for keeping this hobby alive for us geocachers!

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It used to be that when I clicked on the 'Find... nearby caches' link on a cache page, I would get a list of the nearest caches to that particular cache, beginning with the cache closest, and going outward in distance from there.

 

Recently, when I click on the 'Find' links, I get a massive pile of more than a thousand caches, none of which are closer than 15 km from that particular cache. 

 

There is a similar issue with the search function under the 'Play' tab: I put in a GC#, or a coordinate set, but the results are totally out of whack.

 

Is there a toggle or button or something that I need to fiddle with? Or is this just another bug?

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On 11/17/2022 at 9:00 PM, worrellsquirrel said:

I'm seeing this behavior as well... I have notified our engineers. Thanks for reporting.

 

One workaround I discovered: Settings > Preferences > Display search results directly on map

Any word on when this will be fixed?  I have been using the old maps (browse) as a temporary work around, but it is not ideal.  

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On 11/17/2022 at 12:02 AM, barefootjeff said:
On 11/16/2022 at 11:57 PM, tomturtle said:

Additional info:  In some cases, it appears to be defaulting to my home location as a starting point and not showing me the caches that are near the cache I am clicking the link off of.  If I choose a cache that is much farther from home, it shows caches in that area, but the mileage of how far away it is appears to be using my home coordinates.  This is not how it has worked in the past and is not very useful, since I want to see the caches that are closest to the cache that I clicked the link off of.

 

Yes, I'm seeing something similar using those links from cache pages. It seems to be returning caches within 16km of the specified cache but now sorts them by distance from my home location.

 

I hadn't noticed this until today, but, same.

 

If it helps the engineers, here's a specific example of what I am seeing and how I saw it:

 

I wanted to find all earthcaches nearby GC9BC35, including ones I'd found. So I clicked that link on the cache page.

 

The search page result lists distances from my home location, not from GC9BC35, and sorts by those distances. This gives the rather confusing result of listing GC9BC35 as only being the fourth closest, when it should of course be the closest to itself, by a distance of 0.0 feet/meters.

 

image.thumb.png.5b79bf1addfd42a49c617f693b42d439.png

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On 12/14/2022 at 10:31 PM, Team Canary said:

 

Any progress?

 

This is frustrating.

I can only second that. I always use this to prepare for my geocaching trips, so it was annoying last couple of weeks to work around it, but I was counting on it being solved soon. Luckily my time to go out was very limited, so didn't have to deal with the issues too much, but now the holidays are approaching and I really hope this gets fixed soon.  

 

So please let us know about progress and when you expect this to be solved so I can plan accordingly. No judgement if it can't be solved quickly, it's just that I would like to plan ahead a bit. If I can't do my geocaching activities temporarily the way I'd like to do, I can plan to do other things instead until the estimated bug fix closed date.

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My only work-around right now is to change my home coordinates to that of the target cache and then to look for the closest caches to home, which does seem to give me the desired list, but this is a very annoying way to have to handle this.  If anyone has any better workarounds they have found, it would be good to know.  Really hoping this problem gets fixed soon. 

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I just heard back from GC HQ.  Here's what they wrote:

 

Hello Jeff-

Thank you for contacting Geocaching HQ.

I am pleased to report that our engineering team is both aware of the issue and actively working to restore functionality. I'm sorry for any trouble this is causing to your gameplay.

Best regards,

Adam
Community Manager

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4 hours ago, jeffgamer said:

I just heard back from GC HQ.  Here's what they wrote:

 

Hello Jeff-

Thank you for contacting Geocaching HQ.

I am pleased to report that our engineering team is both aware of the issue and actively working to restore functionality. I'm sorry for any trouble this is causing to your gameplay.

Best regards,

Adam
Community Manager


But nothing in their Official Forum!?!

 

And the vaguest of replies.

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Would it be better if it was posted in a forum somewhere?  Yeah.  But the reply isn't vague.  It's saying "we're doing our best".  I know nothing about programming, but this may be more complicated than we imagine, whatever the bug is, and they are surely putting out other fires, too...and I don't know how many people they have working on issues.  I say we cut 'em some slack, y'know?  Would be a lot worse if we couldn't geocache at all, but for now one feature (a nice one, granted) is not working as intended and we have to find workarounds.  May this be our worst problem to occur for the next 12 months, LOL!

 

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3 hours ago, jeffgamer said:

Would it be better if it was posted in a forum somewhere?  Yeah.  But the reply isn't vague.  It's saying "we're doing our best".  I know nothing about programming, but this may be more complicated than we imagine, whatever the bug is, and they are surely putting out other fires, too...and I don't know how many people they have working on issues.  I say we cut 'em some slack, y'know?  Would be a lot worse if we couldn't geocache at all, but for now one feature (a nice one, granted) is not working as intended and we have to find workarounds.  May this be our worst problem to occur for the next 12 months, LOL!

 

I disagree with you with respect your first sentence. The answer was vague, this was just repeating the answer that was given earlier and a response to the question that started this thread. It was not an answer to the questions since: if they can give an indication how long they think it will take, because we haven't heard from them since the previous time they told us they were working on it on Nov 23. 

 

I agree it would be a lot worse if we couldn't geocache at all, because that would mean I wouldn't renew my membership until I knew when I could geocache again. I also agree agree it would be nice if this would be our worst problem to occur for the next 12 months, because that would mean that I can easily solve the worst problem I have the next 12 months (and this would not be to continuously using a workaround by the way).

As I formulated in my post "no judgement", I would just like a little bit more communication, because for me to "cut ''em some slack", they could also show they understand us. It's not about explaining how many people are working on the issues and how hard they are, and certainly no programming-detailed explanations, but a simple update after a few weeks something like a reply on the post of November  23: "We're aware and looking at a fix, thanks." ->  This fix is taking a little bit longer than we expected, we are hoping to get this fixed before Christmas/the end of the year/ in January /any other indication on expected time line.

 

So for now I would already be happy to know if it will roughly take 12 months, 12 weeks or 12 days.

 

 

 

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I may be late to the discussion on this (but a search of this site by "location" query generated no hits) but when I enter a coordinate set in the search box I get a nonsensical result.  The "find caches nearby" function hasn't worked for weeks but I just noticed this one.  Anyone know what the issue is?

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Having recently noticed that the "search by Geocache" function was returning nonsensical results, and the "nearby geocache" search also was not working, I tried "Search by Location" for Huntingtown, Maryland and was rewarded with a list showing the closest cache to be three towns and 11 miles away from Huntingtown...

edexter1053228639_ScreenShot2023-01-02at11_06_44AM.thumb.png.67f8b6dfa934cbf798a35854d7a223bc.png

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A week later, I entered a location search for a cache near N 38° 43.645 W 076° 39.307 (there is a cache at that location) and was rewarded with a list headed by a cache at N 38° 48.951 W 076° 32.339 .. Trying the nearby caches function yielded the same result.  Neither are remotely close.

What's up with this?

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I merged the duplicate threads.

We understand that this bug is annoying and it will be prioritized now that the new year is here and people are returning to work.

 

Like at many companies, end-of-year tends to be a period of security updates, people taking extended periods of vacation, and code freezes. Geocaching HQ is no exception to that.

We apologize for the inconveniences and delays this has caused for this bug to get addressed.

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My previous log was deleted probably under the guise of my reporting one more broken website link, but really because I was being quite critical of HQ. So I will keep this one on topic.

 

Since no one at HQ can be bothered to help any of us, I figured out some work arounds for this this morning after having a frustrating day in the field yesterday working on a Centroid challenge because as you all know, when searching by coordinates, it automatically sorts by distance from our home coordinates, not the much more useful and usual distance from the search location. 

 

So if you go to this link https://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx you can input the coordinates you want to search for and it will give you the much more useful data we all miss so much. Go try it, it works. 

 



 

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Update:  tomturtle reported problem with "Find nearby caches that I haven't found" on 11/16/22.  As of today, 1/9/23 problem has not been resolved.

At present the "search near home location" function is working, though not the search by current location nor the search by coordinates nor the search by city and state...

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