Location search by region

[Emma Hardwidge]

Hi,

Currently when searching by region/location (the ‘Near’ field), if I search for ‘Birmingham’ for example, the suggestions that come up are all in America – it doesn’t list the UK Birmingham, where our events are based.

It looks like this has been covered before, but it still isn’t working for us:

"Near" (location) field favours American cities. UK ones not appearing.

Thanks,
James

[Barry]

Hi James,

I believe the results you are seeing (the various Birminghams located in the US) come directly from Google. I’m not sure if we can exercise control over this but I’ll definitely make a note to look into it.

In your case are all venues within the UK? I do notice for example if I use the search term “Birmingham UK” I see various venues in that area (I’m not suggesting your users should have to do that, I’m only curious in case we can put together a working fix).

Thanks!

[Emma Hardwidge]

Hi Barry,

Thanks for your reply. Not all of the venues are in the UK – there is currently one in Iceland, for example.

Thanks,
James

[Barry]

OK: I’m going to have to discuss this with the team and see what we can do here, so please be patient as it may take a few days, but I’ll endeavour to update you as soon as I can.

Thanks again!

[Emma Hardwidge]

Thanks Barry – I’ll keep an eye out for any replies.

[Barry]

Sure, bear with us a little longer.

It does seem like it might be a peculiarity of Google’s map/geocoding engine itself (since other cities like Leeds, Newcastle etc provide an option mapped to the appropriate UK city – in other words, Birmingham is a sort of aberration) but we’ll check to make sure nothing has regressed in our own code and update you at that point.

Thanks for your patience!

[Barry]

Hi James – unfortunately there is not a lot we can do to help here. We have tightened our code up as much as we can to tolerate situations like this, but ultimately it comes down to Google. Many environs and placenames around Birmingham (and indeed other locations across the UK) return the correct result – so why Birmingham itself does not is a bit of a mystery.

As you also have events outside of the UK I’m afraid there is not much else we can do to help (such as clamping things down to UK results only).

Sorry we can’t do more, but I hope that at least explains where the problem is stemming from – Google Maps, in this instance.

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