Wrong City Appears in Result

[Barbara]

Hi,

We noticed a weird oddity with our SLP plugin.  We use the “Address, City or Postal Code” field and just the “Distance” Field.  One of the main cities when queried returns a result in Romania instead of Canada.  It works great for all the other main and small cities we tried but for some reason with this one city it just doesn’t get the right map location.  I’ve tried finding documentation and it seems everything is setup correct on our end.

URL: 

https://stogryn.ca/find-a-spa-retailer/

Test:  

Input “victoria” into “Address, City or Postal Code” field, with input “200” in “Radius” field

Expected Output:

Victoria BC, Canada Map with locations of Spas

Actual Output:

Victoria, Romania with no locations of Spas

Plugin Environment:

Store Locator Plus:4.9.16

Experience:4.9.14

Power:4.9.15

Site URL:https://stogryn.ca

This Info Cached:1545086868

Network Active:No

WordPress Version:4.9.9

PHP Version:5.5.38

MySQL Version:5.6.41

PHP Limit:256M

WordPress General Limit:40M

WordPress Admin Limit:256M

PHP Peak RAM:32 MB

PHP Post Max Size:1000M

 

Let me know if there is anything else you need or want me to try.

 

Cheers

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[Cici]

Some times Google will redirect and mislead  or just change the algorithms .  They will not admit it of course and there seems to be no rhyme nor reason.

Google most likely has determined that Victoria is not discrete enough. 

There are some search enhancements in Premier that were created to try to narrow down the search or provide hints for your customers to know they need to add more info. Or you can add verbiage instructing them to add more then just a word, for instance add Victoria and the country since there are many places in the world called victoria.

https://docs.storelocatorplus.com/blog/location-search-enhancements/

 

[Barbara]

Hi Cici,

I’ve ran more tests based on your suggestions above, inputting the following into the “Address City or Postal Code” field the following -> “victoria, bc canada”, “victoria canada”, “victoria bc”.

Oddly they all still result to victoria in Romania instead of victoria canada (which is the capital city of the province of BC, not some small rural town).

I’ve added the “City” field as well which gives you default cities in a drop down for Canada.  Selecting “Victoria, BC” also goes to Romania.

So using very specific keywords to pin point the exact city I’m looking for is not working at all.  I’ve also added a photo of the result using the “City” field for you to see, please advise.

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[Cici]

Ok, I just searched Google commercial maps and typed in Victoria British Columbia , it showed the correct location but look at what it returned for lat long etc

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Victoria+817205,+Romania/@48.4262871,-123.394242,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x40b0e48f03d9410f:0x3fe626b121cc0c82!2sVictoria+8

So suspicions confirmed, Googles Algorithm is screwed up even on their own site . I would write to them in their support, and ask them why they are adding +Romania before the lat and long????????

The only other thing that I did mention  are the  Premier features,.,,,,not adding discrete filters, that is not the search enhancements I meant to point pout but the Premier  either SHOW address guess or “Google address guess” feature that is part of premier subscription which you do not have. These kind of instances are exactly why the developer created those features and added them to premier . Unfortunately, I cant suggest anyone purchase or upgrade anything at the moment because the WordPress update has broken so many things, including being able to upload csv files and css features and REST API  that I almost want to tell everyone to get away from their auto updaters

 

As far as how you are using those drop down discrete selectros you may have gone overboard  with allowing  city and the province and the countryyou do not need to also have province selected. You are allowing your customers to select a city and then select a province that the city may not be in and select a country as well.  See the back end screenshot to clarify. It is working correctly on my site., but then again I am not searching the city Victoria BC, which as I mentioned is 100% Google issue

I also viewed your site using browser tools I inspected console for any errors and you may want to fix these.

 

 You have a fatal error on your site. Did you migrate your site from http to https? 

FATAL ERROR: Mixed Content: The page at ‘https://stogryn.ca/find-a-spa-retailer/’ was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure favicon ‘http://stogrynsales.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/favicon-new.png’. This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.

Also you have a lot of warnings: util.js:124 Mixed Content: The page at ‘https://stogryn.ca/find-a-spa-retailer/’ was loaded over HTTPS, but requested an insecure image ‘http://stogrynsales.com/wp-content/plugins/store-locator-le/images/icons/bulb_white.png’. This content should also be served over HTTPS.

 

See Mixed content and issues

On another note: Not sure if it is effecting how your Discrete search menu is now working, but  if you use any browser dev tool and inspect all the warnings and errors you have a bunch that are coming back as “Violations” plugins.js?ver=4.9.9:187 [Violation] Added non-passive event listener to a scroll-blocking ‘wheel’ event. Consider marking event handler as ‘passive’ to make the page more responsive. See https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5745543795965952

 

initSideAreaScroll @ default.min.js?ver=4.9.9:3

(anonymous) @ default.min.js?ver=4.9.9:6

plugins.js?ver=4.9.9:187 [Violation] Added non-passive event listener to a scroll-blocking ‘wheel’ event. Consider marking event handler as ‘passive’ to make the page more responsive. ”

When WordPress auto updated sites a lot of  themes and functions in plugins broke. If this issue just started appearing after WordPress last update  Called a security update 4.9.9 there could be a lot more issues blocking REST API.

WordPress found a bug” and decided it was a major security risk and back-patched it to ALL old releases of WordPress.  So WP 4.9.X gets it (4.9.3) and WP 4.8.X gets it (4.8.8) all the way back to WP 3.7.

 

So any site that has “do not auto-update to major WordPress release” (from 4.9 to 5.X) are still affected.

 

Sadly the ‘prevent major release’ updates is the ONLY switch a site admin can toggle via a simple admin interface.

“Minor” (aka security) patches CANNOT BE DISABLED except from very specialized code built into your theme

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[Barbara]

Hey Cici,

Thanks for the thorough look, I appreciate it very much and for testings. I will note that to google and bug them for a fix.

I’ll also have a look over your other suggestions tomorrow when I’m back in the office.  Thanks again, that was a nice through look.

 

Barb

[Cici]

One other suggestion, double check the address lat and long in the back end, and see if changing it slightly and resaving it fixes the issue, I have found that it sometimes  willl”reset” the google look up.  I would find the lat long on any other then google for starters and fine tune it to the exact location as needed

https://www.latlong.net/place/victoria-bc-canada-4300.html

 

tweak it  that way, it is worth a shot , hope it works for you.

 

[Barbara]

Hey Cici,

I went into the locations today and everything for Victoria was correct to the actual location.  Just trying the search for fun and giggles again it appears the correct city is being recognised.  It seems reporting it to google did the trick or they had it on the list to fix/algorithm fixed itself.

All is working well again.  Thanks for the help.

Barb

[Cici]

Barbara, thanks for reporting back.  Google is constantly changing algorithms.  They also do not use the same algorithms for third party Maps APIS as they do in their commercial maps, They say it is “proprietary”. ( interesting since GPS and lats longs are available through the US govt  census geocoder…  )like anything, the interface to make it usable is what matters.

I would be surprised if Google changed anything that quickly because of one report , but hey its good to let them know, maybe they were getting a lot of people complaining , or maybe now that they have monetized map views and geocoding by requiring a credit card and an account for your API key they are more responsive!

good for you in reporting it as a user!

P.S, if you  think I  provided you five star support and could leave  a positive review on the WPSLP review I would appreciate it

https://wordpress.org/plugins/store-locator-le/#reviews

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