[STEVE]

The “Where” search field is not finding results for anything in the “Country” field of the listings. I am creating listings using two character country codes in the “Country” field. For example, US, UK, etc. But I get the “your criteria returned no results.” message when I search for these codes.
Can you please fix this?

[BePro Software Team]

Hello,

Countries should be stored as actual country names, not shortened versions. They can be any recorded in any language.

However, if maps.google.com accepts the abbreviation and returns the correct result, your current search issue is because of the distance option. In the BePro Listings admin options menu, you will notice the tab “Search/Listings”. Look for the option labelled “Default Search Distance (Mi)”. Set it to a larger number.

This is all explained in the following article

– https://www.beprosoftware.com/documentation/types-of-searching/

An advanced search addon is being created. Register for one of our mailing lists to receive updates on BePro Listings.

Regards,
___
BePro Software Team

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by BePro Software Team. Reason: updated link

[STEVE]

I tried what you suggested. I increased the Default Search Distance (Mi) to the max of 1000, I also entered a full country name. But non of this helped. In fact the “Where” search seems to have gotten worse. It’s now not finding random location information. For example, it will find the state CA, but not NY. I have one listing with the state name spelled out, New Jersey, but it won’t find this. The only city it will find is Los Angeles. It won’t find either of the cities I have on New York listings.
And here is something even more strange. The only time it will show the “your criteria returned no results.” message is if I search for US. Any other failed search just simply returns the default set of listing as they are when you first load the page.
The “Name” search works perfectly when it’s used independently of the “Where” search.
By the way, the “Clear Search” button doesn’t work at all. It actually never has for me since I first installed the plugin.
How can you help with this? Location search is VITAL to my site!
Thanks

[STEVE]

OK. Here is an update. I turned on Ajax and changed the “Default Search Distance (Mi)” to “10”, the lowest. Almost all of the new problems mentioned in my second post have been solved. But I’m left with the original problem mentioned in my first post. I get the “your criteria returned no results.” message when I search for a Country. I am only creating listings for 2 countries as of right now. US and Dominican Republic, but it won’t find listings when I search for either country. If I search for the city in Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, it will find the listing. So, technically it should not have anything to me setting the “Default Search Distance (Mi)” to “10”. It just won’t find anything I type in the Country field for any listing. Can you fix this?

So here is what is working.
I can search by City.
I can search by State.
I can search by ZIP.

But here is an interesting problem. Let’s say I want to search all of the listing in New York State. First I have to increase the “Default Search Distance (Mi)” to “500” because I have a listing in Northern NY and also in Southern NY. The distance between these listings is over 400 miles. But here is where the problem comes in. With the Search Distance setting so high, even if I only search for “New York” (or “NY”) the search results pulls in listings from the neighboring state of New Jersey. That may not sound like such a big deal to some, but I find it ultra annoying when I’m just looking for results in New York. I also think it might come across as a little unprofessional if someone is trying to restrict their search to one state.
Is there a way to make it so if someone truly wants to see listings in only one state that is exactly what they will get?

[STEVE]

One more thing…

Since I turned on Ajax, the “Clear Search” button works. It just doesn’t remember my preferred sort as I indicated in the display_listings shortcode. Anyway to fix that?

[BePro Software Team]

Hi,

Great points.

“Where” searches are currently based on lat/lon mathematical comparisons. We understand that its essential that “where” searches also match against, partial addresses, city, state and country records.

Here is what we can do for you. We recently released our “BePro Listings Search” addon. We have several search enhancements planned for it and the goal was to release them all at the same time. However, since you specifically required this enhancement and its already built, we went ahead and upgraded the addon.

– http://www.beprosoftware.com/shop/bepro-listings-search/

To test it, try the following demo and search for “Canada”

– http://www.bycater.ca

This addon is actually FREE for all of our subscriber members. We often do this with new product releases to get help with testing from the community. Otherwise, you can buy it like any other product

Regarding the “clear search” button not working with ajax features off, you are right. We have a fix going out for that in the next BePro Listings release. Otherwise, the “Clear search” button clears everything and the behavior you described sounds correct.

Regards,
___
BePro Software Team

[STEVE]

1) You didn’t answer my first question. The “Where” search finds nothing I have entered in the “Country” field in the Geographic Details of the listing. No matter if I type the two character country code or the full country name. This to me seems like a bug I have discovered either with my installation or the Plugin as a whole. I shouldn’t have to pay to have this fixed. If you provide a “Where” search that is not able to find listings by Country, than the “Where” search is not functioning properly because “Country” is part of “Where” a listing is located.CAN YOU FIX THIS FOR ME?

2) I tried the demo site as you suggested since you upgraded the Search plugin and did a search for “Canada”. The problem is I don’t have any way of truly testing it because it doesn’t seem like you have any listings in any other country.

Also on this demo site I tried the “Where” search for a specific Province in Canada. If I search for listings in “Manitoba” and keep the search Distance filter at no more than 250 it will only show listing for Manitoba, however if I increase the search distance to 500 it also finds listings in the neighboring province of Saskatchewan. This is the same behavior I experienced on my site when I tried to search for all listings in New York. With the search distance below 500 it will only find some New York listing, with the search distance at 500 it finds all New York listings but also finds listings in the neighboring state of New Jersey. So your demo site is still not able to find all listing in a specific state/province without also pulling in listings from neighboring states/provinces. I can’t see how me buying the “BePro Listings Search” addon for $15.00 is gong to solve this problem. If you do adjust this addon so the “Where” search is truly able to find all and only listings in any one particular State/Province at one time please let me know. Then I will spend the $15.00.

Thanks.

[STEVE]

I’m not sure how, but now on my site when I search for the country Dominican Republic, DO (the official country code) or DR (the unofficial country code) I find the listing!

What sorcery is this? LoL

Did you guys do something? You don’t even have access to my WordPress admin back-end.

However, If I try to search for United States, US or USA, I get the “your criteria returned no results” message. Come on… we are half way there with the country search problem being solved. Go team! LoL 😀

[STEVE]

So I was thinking and I came up with an idea on how you can fix the problem with the “Where” search not being able to return results for only the specific State or Province searched for. You can provide your users an option to not use the default Google Maps search you currently provide and switch to a basic simple search of the Listings Geographic Details fields: City, State, Postcode, Country, the same way the “Name” search field searches the text of the Listing name. This will obviously not provide the “Show Map” feature, but that is OK, as this new option would clearly be a basic search and advanced mapping features would not be necessary or expected. By searching the text of the Geographic Details fields mentioned above, if someone did a “State” search for New York, they would only get listings that have the word New York in the State field and would never see listings for neighboring states. You could also provide new search fields like a pre-populated drop-down list with the names of the States available to search in the list and the same type of drop-down list for Countries available to search. City and Postcode search fields should be simple text boxes.

I was just brainstorming and this is what I came up with. I think it would be a welcomed addition to your current set of features. If you can’t find a way to solve the problem with the current “Where” search you have in place, you might want to consider my suggestion above.

By the way, if you want to see how I’m integrating BePro Listings into my site, here is the link below. Just keep in mind that my site is still in development and none of the content is real, just filler content until I go live; which I hope to do by August 1st, if we can iron out these bugs. 😉 Then maybe you can use my site as a sample to show how cool your product can look in the real world. 🙂

http://nextstar.net/starbase/

[STEVE]

Just in case you view my site, I wanted to point out that because of the Navigation issue I discovered with the [display_listing_categories] shortcode (as I mentioned in this other post) I decided against using that shortcode and came up with my own Listing Categories solution last night. Now if we can only get the search problems fixed I’ll be ready to launch on time. 😉

[BePro Software Team]

Hi,

What you have described about the search features sound 100% correct. Also you recommended features that the Search Addon already provides. I strongly suggest that you read its documentation.

1) My apologies if i did not answer your original question in enough detail.

Each location you enter, provides a lat/lon. Those coordinates are used with the distance setting, to figure out which of your records are close by. This is explained in the documentation

– http://www.beprosoftware.com/blog/types-of-searching/

So in the case of usa, it provides a lat/lon in the center of the country. As you can imagine, searches within 250 miles of the center, won’t return many results. In comparison, for the dominican republic, that distance would retrieve all records and some in neighboring islands (if they exists in your database).

2) The “fix” we call an enhancement, will be supported via the addon only
3) We have several other demos that do not have the search addon installed

– http://maritimetransit.com
– http://whatlocalscallit.com (global locations)

4) When the search plugin is installed, it still does lat/lon comparisons which include distance. This we consider to be an important feature and it is clearly described on the documentation page

– http://www.beprosoftware.com/shop/bepro-listings-search/

Unfortunately, with the addon installed, I am very confused about what you were expecting? If I search for locations within 250 miles of manitoba, I expect results outside of the province.

In your situation, it seems like you need the following setup

– Search addon installed
– Default search distance setting reduced to its lowest level “50 miles”
– (Optional) hide the front end distance select box with css, if you believe it produces confusing results

5) Your last suggestion is interesting (removing advanced search features). Sounds like you are requesting an option of “0 miles” for the distance criteria. That way, it will only return listings with the exact same name e.g. “New York”. We can definitely accommodate this in our next BePro Listings release, if you would like to see it.

Regards,
___
BePro Software Team

[STEVE]

Thanks for the clarification on how the “Where” search starts at the center of the country (if no City or State is provided) and then searches at a distance radius from there. This explains why a search for “US” finds nothing on my site since I have no “US” listing within that radius. My listings are on the west and east coasts.

Does your search addon provide the following functionality when searching location?
– If someone searches for “United States” I need them to find all listings only in the United States.
– If someone searches for “Dominican Republic” I need them to find all listings only in the Dominican Republic.
– If someone searches for “New York” I need them to find all listings only in the New York.
– If someone searches for “New Jersey” I need them to find all listings only in the New Jersey.

As you see the emphasis is on “ALL” and “ONLY”. Possible?

Just a quick note about your http://whatlocalscallit.com/ demo site.
This site contains one listing in the USA (San Antonio, TX, USA). However if someone types “USA” in the “Where” search box and clicks the “Search Listings” button the result of their search is the “your criteria returned no results” message.
Obviously now I know if I then use the filter in the sidebar to increase the Distance of the search radius to 250 it will find that USA listing (500 will also find a listing in Mexico). But this is not obvious to the first time visitor who is not familiar with the sites filter capabilities. You don’t see this as an error in the search functionality in terms of user interface ease of use? Once step is always better than two if at all possible. Am I wrong?

[BePro Software Team]

Hi,

– Yes, the search addon does all of that. Be sure to set the default search distance to its lowest level
– Yes we do see that search is enhanced with our BePro Listings Search addon.

Regards
___
BePro Software Team

[STEVE]

Ok.. Ok.. Fine.. I’m sold. I’ll buy the Search add-on. LoL

BUT.. I hope it really does provide the functionality I described above that I really do need. Thanks for all your help!

[STEVE]

I installed the add-on. I don’t see any changes to the admin interface in WordPress. Also is there documentation I need to read for this add-on?

[Author]

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