Map View & Search Near only returning selected results (venues ommited)

[toottootdesign]

The Map View and Search Near functions are proving very sensitive and I’m unable to determine, why some venues appear in results and others do not (even when they’re in the same location?).

The Map sensitivity has increased since upgrading, I’ve had to switch it off temporarily until this issue can be resolved. If you need it reactivated please let me know and I’ll update.

Example would be search for events near postcode 2000 (Sydney, Australia and 50km radius), results return only one event in code 2019 – despite having two venues in this postcode.
Appears: http://www.australianceramics.com/event/acos-roswitha-wulff-botany-nsw/
Will not appear: http://www.australianceramics.com/event/acos-claypool-botany-nsw/
Additional example, search postcode 4465 and this venue won’t appear: http://www.australianceramics.com/event/acos-melanie-mcevoy-ceramics-studio-mitchell-qld/

I have disable/enable all map related settings, set-up the omitted venue from scratch again and checked address validity on Google maps. Made Australia the default country. Searched with and without filters; on the exact postcode 2019, increased and decreased search results to appear (up to 100 results). No amount of saving and refreshing, clearing cached will get the venue to appear.

[George]

Hey @toottootdesign,

Thanks for describing things in detail here – there are indeed some occasional buggy behaviors that can arise from our Maps functionality, namely because of things with the Google Maps API, although that does not seem to be the case here based on what you’ve written.

You mention disabling the Map View, but being willing to turn it back on – would you be able to turn it back on for now, just for some troubleshooting purposes from our end of things? We’ll take a look and see how things behave, specifically in regard to that venue you shared at the end of your post. That might help us get a better sense of things here.

Thank you!
George

[toottootdesign]

Hi George,

I have enable Map View and the location search field. Note, the location search field is only visible in Map View (I’m trying to limit complaints about not finding events/venues).

Additional historical context (around 26 July), I received complaints that users where unable to find venues when searching by place name. I performed testing which seemed to indicate search by place name was failing when place names can be found in more than one country e.g. Melbourne can be found in Canada, UK, and USA as well as Australia.

As a work around to this issue, I realised if you restricted searches to postcode only – you returned (correct) results! (I’m assuming this is because postcodes are unique, compared to location names). I posted basic instructions on how to use the NEAR search function using postcode only (now removed).

This worked only until this past week when venues started complaining some locations weren’t responding to postcode only searches either.

I really hope there is a resolution to this problem, as I paid for full versions of The Events Calender and add-ons to ensure an enhanced and sooth user experience.

[George]

Hey TootTootDesign,

To address your reply in reverse order, yes, I can totally understand your frustration with things after buying licenses and can assure you that we’re working hard here to straighten things out!

As for your actual searching-by-location, I’m a bit uncertain of the specific problem because for me, it does work fine on your site. Location search is supposed to be by city name, primarily, and if I search for, for example, “botany”, then events near Botany do show up and are filtered correctly. Even this event here, which you mentioned above did not show up for you: http://www.australianceramics.com/event/acos-claypool-botany-nsw/

Here’s the full URL for the Map View search for events near “botany” that worked for me → http://www.australianceramics.com/events/map/?action=tribe_geosearch&tribe_paged=1&tribe_event_display=map&tribe-bar-geoloc-lat=-33.9443842&tribe-bar-geoloc-lng=151.19628690000002&tribe-bar-geoloc=botany

If you navigate to that URL, what problems do you have? Are your only problems if you search for things by zipcode?

I’m very sorry to go over the details of the problem again, and your patience is much appreciated here – I just was unable to produce problems on your site when I search for things by location.

Thank you for patience and for re-enabling Map View temporarily on your site so we can troubleshoot!

— George

[toottootdesign]

Hi George,

I’ve been through search by place name and these are the issues I’m having with it. All of the below situations are occurring in the Search NEAR / MAP View.

When you search by place name some venues are omitted from the results, not appearing in either the results list nor map pin view. This is why I initially specified the postcode search – as it seemed to capture all venues.

Example, when you search “Melbourne VIC, Australia” (pre-populated from drop down of Melbourne place options), the below venue doesn’t return in the list of results or as a pin on the map, despite being only 33km from the CBD (within the 50km radius set, I also changed the radius to 100km and this venue is still omitted): http://www.australianceramics.com/event/acos-adriana-christianson-croydon-vic/

In regards to the Botany venues, if you broaden the search to simply “Sydney NSW, Australia”, a common and reasonable search parameter, the previously discussed venue http://www.australianceramics.com/event/acos-claypool-botany-nsw/ won’t return in the list of results or as a pin on the map? Yet, this venue only a few streets away does: http://www.australianceramics.com/event/acos-roswitha-wulff-botany-nsw/
Why, why, why?

Additionally, even when I narrow search input to NEAR “Botany” only the Rosawith Wulff studio appears in results – Claypool still doesn’t return. I can’t expect all users to specifically search “Botany”
to find a venue “Near” them. I have gone to great lengths to include the suburb in the title of venues/events, so if a user uses the general (text) search field (not the search near / map view) to find venues in “Botany” they will return as it’s in the text.

This venue http://www.australianceramics.com/event/acos-melanie-mcevoy-ceramics-studio-mitchell-qld/ won’t appear when searching for “Mitchell” or “4465” you have to type “Mitchell, QLD” before it will return in results. The search near field does not pre-populate with all possible “Mitchell” place options either.

In a nutshell searching by place name requires specific and sensitive input values and returns inconsistent results. I generally learn of a “missing” venue via complaint. To combat these nuances, I’ve heavily categorised the venues using the Filter Bar to ensure all venues are displayed. Ultimately, search near / map view should just work?

[toottootdesign]

Video of results: https://youtu.be/t2o2Ic5mzRc

[George]

Hey @toottootdesign,

First of all, thank you for the amount of detail and information here!

Second of all, apologies for the delayed response – I had to unexpectedly travel a bit on Wednesday and Thursday and am catching up on everything here now on Friday. Real sorry about that!

And thirdly, at last, on to your actual issues here:

There is some unfortunate news I have to bear here, but there is a possibility of some good news too.

The bad news is that Google’s Maps API has recently been behaving less consistently than it used to. Not for bad reasons – the API is simple changing and evolving and our code isn’t 100% up-to-date with those changes yet. We’ve recently been able to reproduce some inconsistent behavior with our Map View filtering, and I learned that one of our biggest planned items for the forthcoming 4.0 release of The Events Calendar is an overhaul of our handling of the Maps API from Google.

So that news is a bit of a bummer, and if the behavior on your site does end up being the result of some insurmountable oddness from the Google API itself, then there’s unfortunately not a whole lot that we can do…

…However, there are some venues on your site that don’t seem to have their Latitude and Longitude coordinates accurately generated at the moment, so while there are some general inconsistencies with the Google Maps API, the issue for now on your site may not be resulting from that – it could just be the lack of proper coordinates.

An example of one of these venues without the coordinates is this one: http://www.australianceramics.com/venue/claypool/

I reached out to a developer on our team and he suggested the following steps to try and regenerate accurate coordinates for the venue:

• Go to edit the venue in your wp-admin.
• Slightly modify the street address to something incorrect/gibberish, and save the the venue.
• Then, change the address back to the proper, real address and save again.

If Google is not rejecting API requests from your server for some reason, then this just update the coordinates with correct ones.

After doing these steps, take a break for a bit, a few minutes at least, to let the changes propagate and hopefully if you then try the Map View later that Venue will appear.

I hope this information is helpful and that these steps work for you – feel free to repeat them for any venue that you notice doesn’t show up where it would make sense for them to.

Let us know what you find!

George

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