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Is there any documentation that clearly spells out how the search bar works to provide results? There seems to be no consistent logic on how search/filtering is working depending on where I start, and what parameters I enter. For example, it would appear that the search will almost always return results, even when the parameters I enter would seemingly exclude those same events from being displayed. It’s just not clear what the logic is and what I should tell users to expect. There are times I enter GA, for Georgia, and I get one set of results, and if I enter Georgia, I can get a slightly different set of results. If I enter New York, where I have no events, I still get results for locations outside of New York. I don’t need locations outside of New York. I need to be told “There’s no events currently scheduled for New York.” If I type in “lecture” and no event has the word lecture in it, I would expect no event results. However, I still get results based on the date, if that was selected, and the location, if that was selected, but none of them have lecture as a category or lecture as a word in the post body.
I’m very frustrated and confused by the results and feeling like the money spent on the license and support has not provided any value to this point. Please convince me otherwise.
Location based searching is heavily dependent on a third party API, in this case provided by Google.
When a venue is created – and also when a location-based search is made – we need Google’s help in converting that place name or address to a set of coordinates. Crucially, this means that we rely on the third party accurately interpreting the place name and returning appropriate coordinates, or an appropriate menu of options if the place name or address is ambiguous. Anomalies do crop up here and there that can for instance make it seem as if a major city isn’t recognized – there isn’t always much we can offer to help in such situations as much depends on the third party API.
You also need to be aware that the coordinates for a state are likely to be some point in the middle of that state, or perhaps the principal town/city (and how Google interprets “Georgia” as opposed to “GA” may vary). When you take this into consideration with the fact that location-based searches are normally limited to a certain radius, as defined in Events → Settings → Display → Map Settings you can get a sense for why results for a specific city might include events outwith that city, as a city is typically a smaller geographic entity than a state.
However, I still get results based on the date, if that was selected, and the location, if that was selected, but none of them have lecture as a category or lecture as a word in the post body.
Can you give a real life example of this on your site so I can take a look? A combination of a date, location and keyword like ‘Lecture’ on map view at the URL you provided didn’t generate any results for me (though I could easily not be hitting on the right terms to replicate this).
I can definitely appreciate that you are frustrated and if we can help or provide further insights we will certainly try our best to do so.
To take up your example of events being returned outside of New York, when you search only for New York itself, can you confirm the place name you are using? If for instance it is simply “New York” that could conceivably be interpreted as one of two things – the state or the city. Might that be part of the picture here?
To the last question, we have an event scheduled in Atlanta. Depending on where we start the search and how many times we might change the search, we have seen that event not show as a result when it should. We’ve also tried searching using a word in the name of the event, which is also in the body, in the venue name, etc. and it wouldn’t always return a result. We’ve done a video that I’ll post once it uploads, that can show you some of what we’re talking about.
Should I be seeing your private reply, Barry? I see that you replied to my private reply, but I can’t seem to access the private message
Sorry for the confusion: that reply should not have been marked private. Our support system has been undergoing some upgrades and unfortunately that’s thrown up a few quirks – what I wrote though was:
Thanks for preparing and sharing that.
Certainly that is an odd problem and not one I can replicate locally or on our demo site – though I can see a different (possibly related) problem that occurs when the search is made via ajax.
Can you confirm if the same problem with your example search – using the same keyword – happens if you load the page directly (that is, hit Find Events initially as you did in the screencast then copy and paste the URL and re-load it directly)?
Yes. It does still do the same thing when copying and pasting directly. I thought we demonstrated that in the video, but maybe we left it out.
We host with WPEngine, which does some heavy caching. Would that be a potential problem?
I’m sorry to hear that – but I do sympathize and understand your position here.
To request a refund, please email us at the following address. If you can also include a copy of your receipt (or receipts) with your email and a link to this thread (so that the relevant team member sees the context of the request) that would be appreciated:
pro (at) tri (dot) be
Thanks, Barry. Sorry it’s not working out this time, but I may give it a shot again if I have the luxury of starting an events site from scratch, rather than trying to add the functionality to a long established site. I appreciate your efforts and wish you guys the best.
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