Near Search: How to handle location disambiguation?

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Tagged: disambiguation, Search Near

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June 22, 2014 at 12:27 pm #5553

marco7
Free User

Post count: 19

Example:

-I look for places near a local tourism region but I get results ordered by the distance from another location 10000 km away (unfortunately another region with the same name in Colombia)

Is there a way to exclude the unwanted locations from the search results? or override the search by adding the location/region by default?

I tried the following without success:

-GD>Multilocations>Location Settings. Enabling selected countries or region

-GD>Multilocations>Add Edit Location. I created a new location and I called it with the term I wanted to replace in the search.

Could you please suggest a solution?

Thanks

June 22, 2014 at 12:31 pm #5554

Guust
Moderator

Post count: 29970

Have you set “Limit squared distance area to X miles (helps improve search speed)” in GD > General > Search ?
Can you let us know if that fixed it or not?

June 22, 2014 at 12:56 pm #5555

marco7
Free User

Post count: 19

Hi Guust,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I also tried that and I still have the same problem

June 22, 2014 at 12:58 pm #5556

Guust
Moderator

Post count: 29970

Mmmm, better pass this one to Vikas.
While we wait for Vikas, can you post URL and WP admin access details in a private post please?

June 22, 2014 at 4:44 pm #5573

marco7
Free User

Post count: 19

This reply has been marked as private.

June 22, 2014 at 11:26 pm #5609

purpleedge
Expired Member

Post count: 539

It used to be that the “Search Near” would order results by distance from the search location, and show the distance – I don’t know if newer version is also meant to filter to the entered location?

June 23, 2014 at 6:43 pm #5741

Paolo
Site Admin

Post count: 31206

hi,

results are order by distance from the location entered.

“Salento Puglia” works, because for Google Maps “Salento” as a tourist region doesn’t exist.

In fact, if in Google Maps (.it) itself you search for “Salento” it will return as only result a city near Salerno : https://www.google.it/maps/place/84070+Salento+SA/@40.2484681,15.1908607,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x133ead16bb767859:0xf1f18e9e18088b36

If you use Google Maps .com, it will return a city in Colombia as first result.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Salento,+Quindio/@4.594645,-75.51396,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x8e3892bcedc420e5:0x8f81edeeadd699ba

Only by searching Salento Puglia Google Maps is able to recognize the area, only because there are places with Salento in their name located in that area:

https://www.google.it/maps/search/salento+puglia/@41.0080599,16.7272393,8z/data=!3m1!4b1

We would have to ask Google Maps to modify their databases to fix this… 🙁

Sorry about it,

June 23, 2014 at 8:38 pm #5766

marco7
Free User

Post count: 19

This reply has been marked as private.

June 23, 2014 at 10:53 pm #5787

Paolo
Site Admin

Post count: 31206

Hi Marco,

the reason why it’s returning results from colombia is (probably) because you are using everywhere location.

In that case the search is performed worldwide.

Example:

1 if I search Monument near salento here: http://wpgeo.directory/?geodir_search=1&stype=gd_place&s=monument&snear=salento&sgeo_lat=4.633333299999999&sgeo_lon=-75.56666669999998

It will give me the same result as in your website.

But if I select one of the locations (new york for example) before searching, you will get no results found, as it will work as expected.

Now if you are using country restrictions, it shouldn’t search everywhere in the world, but only in those countries. Ive checked on our demo and unfortunately it doesn’t.

I’ll refer to Vikas so that he can improve the script.

Thank you!

June 24, 2014 at 9:19 am #5850

marco7
Free User

Post count: 19

Hi Paolo,

I did solve this little glitch by redirecting the search results, just by using a 302 and a list of common keywords used in the search.

I’m not a developer and I know you are already very busy working on GD, but I think it would be really good to override google sometimes.

Something like being able to redirect some search results according to our needs, I’m not asking for a new plugin, I would be happy even with few lines of code.

For example If I use New York as a location in http://wpgeo.directory/

I’m looking for a tavern near Canal Street Subway station, so I just write “Tavern” and “Canal Street” OR “Canal St”.

As result I’m getting one of your test listings Gramercy Tavern, but the distance is calculated from Canal Street in Brattleboro, VT, 160 miles away.

Thanks for the support,
Marco

June 24, 2014 at 10:59 pm #5978

Paolo
Site Admin

Post count: 31206

Hi Marco,

well that is a bug… GD should add new your to your Near filed query. If you have selected New York as location. I’ll ask Vikas to fix that…

Thanks for highlighting it.

June 24, 2014 at 11:43 pm #5981

purpleedge
Expired Member

Post count: 539

Without selecting New York, if you type near “Canal Street, NY” it calculates the distance as 1.48 miles – so I don’t think it is a big bug?

If geolocation is enabled, how will the search work on a mobile phone? What if I want to know how far the Tavern is from “me”? (Just curious)

June 24, 2014 at 11:50 pm #5985

Paolo
Site Admin

Post count: 31206

Yes, but after an address or zip that user inputs, it’s not difficult to add the name of the location to the query sent to google API. GeoTheme does something similar and I think both Stiofan and VIkas will agree it’s logical and needed.

GeoLocation on mobile will still use your IP, we can’t access GPS info that easily without an APP. In major cities IP location on mobile is almost as precise as GPS.

Thx
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