Terrible search results

Forsberg shared this problem 18 months ago
In Progress

Hello,

I wondered what is the point of Search Online in Locus Map if the results it provides are terrible? They rarely match anything at all.
I type a popular clinic name in my city in Google maps - I have at least 3 clinics.
I type the same in Locus map (Google selected) and I see 5 results 100 km further, in various cities (while none in my city). I type a popular market name - locus 4, google maps 16.

Is it possible to make results as good as in Google maps? Or perhaps make Locus access such results so it could be just a one click to start navigating to that particular point?

At current state Search is totally useless, sorry....

Replies (8)

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This is not a mistake. The search is simply not better at the moment. The search is only just beginning. It will get better over the next few years.
You can use Google for search. Just put the app in the sidebar. When you have a result in Google go to Share with Locus. Then you have the location in Locus.
From time to time you should use the Locus search and share bad results here. Otherwise it can't get any better.
https://forum.locusmap.eu/index.php?topic=8436.0

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Thanks!

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I gave up reporting nonsense results. Not worth the effort sorry. Results from countries at top of list that are 1000's of km away when there are valid POI within walking distance. Use LM for offline POI & Maps for online POI then Share with LM. As mentioned that is an efficient combination.

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Funny. A straight search does not show my nearby Aldi. But going through "points nearby" does show that one and the others in a logical order of distance.

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The best way to find an Aldi is on Google Maps. Such large companies maintain their data in maps very accurately. Whether they also do this in OSM is not certain. and LoPoi offline are only updated every 4 months.
In Maps you can be sure that you have very up-to-date data.

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@freischneider - but Locus search uses Google's engine or so the results should be correct. Imho this is a one of the worst thing in Locus, never fixed for years.

I even considered Locus Map 4 but it per interface and options it seems like a backward compared to 3, especially still lack of vector map text rotation.

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I cannot say what is used in LM3. Because this is an LM4 post here. But in LM4 the search via Google was switched off. There was a lot of discussion.
But there is a good link to maps in LM4.

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Hi guys,

could someone please post here a sample of the clearly problematic search?

Mainly

  • your current map screen center
  • your current location (approx.)
  • search query
  • and also a screenshot of the result that does not match the expected result should be useful

Radim will gladly look at it and explain the result ...

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have supplied many examples a year ago when LM4 online search was radically modified

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+9 months - I was going to supply an example, but testing just now suggests great improvement. I had stopped using online search, but if current "office" test is true, will resume use. I must have missed a mention in the release notes. Thanks!

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Also a language currently set in Locus, if that is not very obvious please.

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As also discussed in https://forum.locusmap.eu/index.php?topic=8436.135 :

Are there any plans to bring back Google Online Search? I think it would be a good alternative if current OSM-based online search is not successfull for a certain search request.

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Hello
Try this setting

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Very good, thats what I wanted, thanks!

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What I'm wondering: if using the old Online-Search with "Google":

Is Google just used for addresses? Because I think if searching for places/POIs the results are either OSM-based or OSM-exclusive, since results are found which are just present in OSM, not in Google Maps.

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Yes, google search can't search in our POI database. It is one of the reasons why we built our own search engine which combine two separate location datasets. ...Which never be optimal by the way, because it is impossible to properly evaluate difference in importance of particular POI against address in regards to search result.

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Offtopic maybe, but I just tried 5 searches for adresses in villages through "search for online adresses" in Classic 3.17.15 and they were spot on. However, searching for "Decathlon" or "Aldi" (a supermarket brand) gave useless results. Nothing nearby allthough they are nearby and some results as far away as 1100 kilometers.

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Hello

Have you configured this setting?

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I wrote "off-topic" because I am using Classic and also that setting is not availnble in Classic. And I am sure it will not be. No problem for me.

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Yep, with Classic you either search online address or in dowloaded offline POI db, not both together. Please see my reply to Sonny above. The search experience in LM4 is completely different, including the way how the results are presented.

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Here is an example with some results several thousand/hundrets km away:


your current map screen center:

N 48° 46.705870', E 009° 10.763033'


your current location (approx.): Stuttgart, Germany


search query: "Aldi"


Language: German


screenshot of the result that does not match the expected result should be useful.

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Hi druki,

the screenshot is from search suggestions, where the search is trying to guess what you want to search before you even complete the typing and takes into account also "importance" of locations. But even there I see plenty of Aldi stores in the results around you.

So, is the problem that you can't find what you want or that there are also results from far away which might or might not be relevant for your search phrase?

Please note, that you can also press magnifying glass to get results (presented both on map and on the list together), where our search engine will not add guesses to location names which don't exactly match your search phrase.

But yes, even like that you can get city "Aldi" in the Bangladesh among your results, because in some cases you might want to search something like this and not everyone figure out, that to search important placemark far away, you have to first unzoom the map to whole world.

But to mitigate that you can just press button "search in this area" and it will will filter them out completely. I see now, we have small bug there so you have to first move the map a little in order for the button to appear. In case you get some result outside of your map window the button should be present right away. We will fix that.

Please let me know whether this description helped you.

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ok, in search (with magnifyer), Aldi Bangladesh result is on second place.

How about being able to select search sorting to "relevance" vs. "closest" etc?!

I understand that most of the users don't care about configurations (change sorting), but some users who expect a certain behaviour would love to have locus match their more speciffic needs for a search. Im looking forward to any improvement of the search. Thanks for keeping working on it ❤.

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Expert settings -> Tools -> Enable online search (old)

There was quite some noise about this very subject many months ago and Menion put that option in above place without fanfare quite a while ago. WELL DONE !!

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suggest adding a custom search feature, similar to the custom location sharing functionality, where users can configure their own search API endpoints and define the JSON response fields.

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