Zip code shows NO LOCATIONS FOUND.

[Danny]

Hello, I have store locator based in Australia.
When postcode 2000 (Sydney) is entered result shows NO LOCATIONS FOUND when there are in fact several around Sydney?
All other capital cities around Aust (eg. 3000 Melbourne, 5000 Adelaide) are fine.
So pretty much zip code 2000 is the only one not working properly?
URL is http://www.naturalformula.com.au/stockists/
I have up to date version of SLP and WordPress.
Thank you.

[Cici]

Hi Danny,

Unfortunately this has nothing to do with SLP nor WP updates. It is Google

Google decides what to return for zip/postal codes. The postal code 2000 is not unique enough so Google determines what to return if a visitor to your site types in 2000. Googles algorithms determines what they “Think” your user is searching for based on how frequent those searches appear. For example Johannesburg South Africa also uses 2000 as their postal code. So their is a good chance that Google is looking there an sees that you have no locations in your database fitting the desired outcome when it returns the results using your SLP search and results radius settings.

(Information about this in Docs https://docs.storelocatorplus.com/blog/google-map-domains-supported-in-slp/)

There are some work around such as adding more text in the search box instructions for your site visitor to add more info such as a srett address or a city and state or country so Google can correlate better.

Alternatively, the Experience Add-on allows you to append a county via the search form or using a shortcode added to slplus. If all your locations are in Australia that would be the surest solution.
https://docs.storelocatorplus.com/blog/results-layout-shortcodes-and-attributes/

Premier customers have the ability to set a search address guess or autocomplete options
https://docs.storelocatorplus.com/blog/google-map-domains-supported-in-slp/

Please provide your Plugin environment and versions when you post in the forums.
See Posting guidelines at the top of the forum. This allows us to be more accurate with our answers. For instance I have no idea which version you are using and if you already have any add-ons, what versions they are.

[Cici]

P.S. I have recently tested on my test site and indeed Google is ignoring the “zip” or Postal code 2000 for Sydney and all other postal codes in Australia are returning properly. No idea what is going on with Google but I searched in the Google developers issues here:https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/72122489

and apparently in January 2018 Google changed the filtering , they called it ‘New Forward Geocoding” and the suggestion in Stack overflow was to be more specific with filtering. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48346019/geocode-component-filtering-with-field-locality-not-working-as-expected

So I went back to test on my site. If I added the City Sydney and the zip 2000 it came back with all the locations and data sets I have in my dataset for Sydney . If I type in just Sydney in the search box, it also returned all the locations in Sydney. But if I JUST use the zip or postal code 2000 I get No results even though their are results in my dataset

So until the SLP developer can find yet another work around for Googles new found screw ups, the best suggestion I can give you is to add labels or text in the search box instructing the viewer/visitor to enter the address/ city NOT just postal code. Another suggestion could be to use the discrete filter by drop down widget to show the Locations by City. Also a heads up…Google is adding another layer of tom foolery June 11, 2018 requiring all APIs to have a billing account. Please read the latest news for more info.

[Author]

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