Online search

[michaelbechtold]

Go near Barcelona, search for
Restaurant Semproniana
- no match in LM4 4.17
- immediate match in Google maps
The search team asked me for an example, here is my first.
I simply went to my private POIs, picked the first restaurant I found - bang.
I think the UI and mechanics can be as elaborated as you want, if the data source is not comprehensive enough, you lose.
Cheers
Michael

[T-mo]

Go near Barcelona, search for
Restaurant Semproniana

note: while 'Semproniana' gets found immediately, 'Restaurant Semproniana' brings the results as described.
Helpful example!

[michaelbechtold]

Next one: Hotel Monegal

[Andrew Heard]

More thoughts bubble to the surface after a sleep... a better example, maybe - online search for "bar" (I'm in Dingle, Ireland, so plentiful POI). I don't yet tap the Find button. 1st item is "bar, pub - category" - good. The 2nd item is city of Barcelona - really? Maybe 2000km away. The 3rd item is "McCarthys Bar" 1km away - good. Now on 2nd test of same sequence Barcelona is 1st item.

This time I tap the Find button - "Paudies Bar" is maybe 800m way - good, but 2nd & 3rd list items are places in France with "bar" in their name eg. "19800 Bar, France" - bad, and"McCarthys bar" is lost. I now tap SEARCH THIS AREA - only 1 more local bar icon is shown, whereas there are dozens.

When tested with a phone there are only a few search results, but when tested with a tablet there are many more results.

When compared to LoPoints(offline)  with a Locus map there are 20+ bars within 500m.

1) should it even be necessary to tap Find? Just populate list after a pause in typing?

2) should it even be necessary to have a SEARCH THIS AREA button? Wouldn't most common search to be of visible map? When results are empty or scrolled to end of list, maybe the last item is "search wider area"?

3) I think @tapio suggested showing distance to each list item.

4) hover over any Search icon could display a popup or scroll the list otherwise it's not obvious which icon is which.

5) I think it is bad to zoom out (at all) to show icons in the list until one is even tapped, or at least restore original zoom/ position if Back button is pressed.

I hope this is constructive, and not just a rant.

[Andrew Heard]

Google Map > POI > share > LM4 > opens LM > online address screen > but nothing actually shared

[Radim V]

I'm still quite confused how the new online search works. Again (next town on cycle trip) I look for a laundromat. Google Maps finds nearest 1km away. It works reliably every time. It has "cleaners" in the name, so I return to Locus & type "cleaner" but the nearest match is 1000km+! Please suggest how I would accomplish this simple task with just LM rather than Maps 1st then trying to match addresses. Thanks.

BTW the hamburger menu is still quite slow to respond sometimes.

The reason this is not working as expected is: Laundry rooms are not included in the database. The third party service probably finds some occasional match based on name. But in the primary, structured database that we build - and which enables functions like "show them all nearby, no matter the name" e.t.c - there are none so far. I agree they should be there and most likely, we add them in the next extension step.

[Radim V]

More thoughts bubble to the surface after a sleep... a better example, maybe - online search for "bar" (I'm in Dingle, Ireland, so plentiful POI). I don't yet tap the Find button. 1st item is "bar, pub - category" - good. The 2nd item is city of Barcelona - really? Maybe 2000km away. The 3rd item is "McCarthys Bar" 1km away - good. Now on 2nd test of same sequence Barcelona is 1st item.

This time I tap the Find button - "Paudies Bar" is maybe 800m way - good, but 2nd & 3rd list items are places in France with "bar" in their name eg. "19800 Bar, France" - bad, and"McCarthys bar" is lost. I now tap SEARCH THIS AREA - only 1 more local bar icon is shown, whereas there are dozens.

When tested with a phone there are only a few search results, but when tested with a tablet there are many more results.

When compared to LoPoints(offline)  with a Locus map there are 20+ bars within 500m.

1) should it even be necessary to tap Find? Just populate list after a pause in typing?

2) should it even be necessary to have a SEARCH THIS AREA button? Wouldn't most common search to be of visible map? When results are empty or scrolled to end of list, maybe the last item is "search wider area"?

3) I think @tapio suggested showing distance to each list item.

4) hover over any Search icon could display a popup or scroll the list otherwise it's not obvious which icon is which.

5) I think it is bad to zoom out (at all) to show icons in the list until one is even tapped, or at least restore original zoom/ position if Back button is pressed.

I hope this is constructive, and not just a rant.

The idea how to find a nearby bar is like this: Type "bar", "pub". Something like "Public service", "Bar, pub" is suggested. These are bars like category of places, whatever name they have. Then if you tap Bar, pub (category), the first item actually suggested, you will see some. No need to use "Find" at all for nearby bars. Not all of bars will pop up necessarily, because in many cases there would be no map, just icons. If you pan or zoom, more bars come and go. If there are many of them, close to each other, only a few are visible. If this does not work in Dingle, then the server must be down or something drastic must be happening.
Problems, or maybe problems:
 - Nobody tells you "zoom in to see them all" (Like Gmaps tells you)
 - Which bar is better, more important, thus visible first or recommended first place?: The Small Bridge or The Dingle Pub? We don't know yet and it is very difficult to answer this for the world wide data.
 - Sometimes only one icon is seen when there is a large cluster of places. Zoom in to see them all.
IMHO this approach makes sense. It has confusing aspects (mostly because we don't know what is important in the real world, and some ordering is virtually random), but it works and is not that pathetic.
The same way this category based search works for waterfalls, shelters, glaciers e.t.c
 1) unless there is some server problem, this is happening.   
A note about ordering: Order by distance exclusively is not used. There is a lot of work to do, but I don't think Barcelona for "Bar" is that irrelevant.

[Andrew Heard]

I don't think Barcelona for "Bar" is that irrelevant.

@Radim - maybe the search should consider the current zoom level? Barcelona may be relevant if close by, but not when 2000km, and the map is zoomed out to display, non-existent map/ no offline map even exists. This zoom-out to 2000km happens on most searches which is bad.

Did you check why a share from Google Maps doesn't work? This workaround would help alot.

[michaelbechtold]

It's a long was to ...

I definitely agree a properly working share fron Google Maps is a must, if the use if the API Service from GM is discarded.

Re. overcrowding and zooming: Locus will hardly have a proper priority of items to show anytime soon. It cannot, I think, hence no criticism.

But Locus already has a smart system to deal with overcrowding (I recently taught it to Inge, whom I brought to Locus some time ago): it's the grouping. As long as there are numbers, pan and zoom.
Just my 2c.

[Radim V]

GM share - we just probably forgot to test it. 
Zoom level affecting the composition of results, or maybe even search engines low level - this can be quite easily done (simple version) and I agree it is a next logical step.
Which bar is important and which is not: in the world of AI, some improvement over what we have now is IMHO quite possible, but very labourious and from the "data work" point of view also very hard.
Clusters of pois displaying numbers - server side this should be easy, front - end boys will hopefuly cope :-)

[lor74cas]

Hello,
The distance shown in the icon does not refer to GPS location or cursor, It seems the distance form screen border in mt.
Is this the correct behavioir?

[michaelbechtold]

@search team: https://forum.locusmap.eu/index.php?topic=8460.msg71808;topicseen#msg71808

People are relying on Locus when traveling - DO NOT LET THEM DOWN!

There is not even a way to search in Google Maps and share into Locus (I tried multiple ways, also Plus Code)

[jonny.blue]

People are relying on Locus when traveling - DO NOT LET THEM DOWN!

+1 😥

[Tapio]

There is not even a way to search in Google Maps and share into Locus (I tried multiple ways, also Plus Code)

Longtap somewhere close to target (create an own red pin), then share to Locus.

Oh yes. Locus should parse and check input in the online search and check for all relevant geopos formats there. That would be user friendly. Then this can truly be a place where users can dump everything in - positions, addresses, search terms...
And of course Locus needs to support the textual Pluscode. ("36XF+JPR, Erkelenz") - because that's the one Google spits out everywhere.

[Jan Čapek]

Hi, sorry, this will be slightly longer.  

We are really happy to be compared to Google search, but even when we think we made huge step towards, let's be honest there: Google is still beyond our league in terms of search capabilities. At least within the cities. But with your help, we will outgrow them soon, we are getting there. To more serious note, we can't use their search API in the way how they are using them on Google Maps - it is simply not the option and we would also loose ability to handle some of our specific requirements! But please keep in mind that this is also big redesign of this functionality on our side and as much as we tried to design it intuitive, it makes some times to get used to it.

Handling POI sharing from Google Maps will be fixed in near occasion, it indeed slipped through our tests. Can't confirm yet, whether we will be able to retrieve also its location or we will again try to find it by name on our search again. Alternatively, you can hold-press anywhere on the map on Google Maps and share specific location which is open properly on Locus Map with exact position.

There are few feedbacks that we can't search for place if you write down its name together with POI category (Restaurant Semproniana). That is fair note, we will think whether we can do something with this in the future. "Bar" or "Restaurant" are not part of the name and we can't do multiple-params searches yet.

@Andrew Heard The suggestions are not the same as text search results! The suggestions are guessing what you want to search even when you didn't tape everything yet or doesn't know whole name. Text search (when clicking to Find) should get you results what you weren't able to get via suggestion module or allow you to search on top of map. It allows you to find for specific place even if its name is part of the name of important placemarks thus suggestion module will not offer it (Barcelona // Barce).

To expect that search (as overall functionality incl. suggestions) should immediately strictly limit results to visible map area is not thinking to other use-cases which such search must handle. (For example, how do you find places which you do not have yet idea where they are at all?) Getting "Barcelona" suggested on Bar is, we believe, really correct as it is major city and there is significant probability that you want to find it when write such letters, thus allowing you to click on it gets you faster to what you might want. That is also why it behaves quite similar even in Google Maps, btw. 

The main reason for "search area" button in text search is to not automatically reload results when you want to explore them, for example when looking for something particular. But even here are reasons to not limit search strictly to viewed area, otherwise some use-cases will not be covered and others users will report wrong/missing results. Your suggestion to limit first and have "show wider area" button on bottom seems to be more limiting for future functionalities than current approach.

BTW your case when you were zoomed out to 1000km+ far to see first result when getting one near you if zooming in again and clicking to search the area is quite extreme case - we will discuss this. Yes, this might happen when "importance" of results of wide-area search will push out of the list the one next you.

We understand it is too intuitive that some results will be shown only when you zoom in due to POI grouping. Will discuss possible solutions to that.

@lor74cas It is correct behavior - this just indicates directions of results outside of your map while you can be anywhere else in the real. We plan to add distances from GPS position to the list of results bellow the map.