Search API returning (very) sparse geocode results

[mykopon1]

I must to confirm that the problem in issue 1 is not fixed, please hurry up, my startup is going to crumble.

[SKHardcastle]

My results are still sparse as well. This issue is not fixed. Can you please provide an ETA?

[isaach]

Correct, the issue is not fixed. Results will continue to be sparser than before until we’re able to restore the “fallback to profile location” functionality. We’re working on that but don’t have a firm timeline; however, I’m not expecting a fix in 2014.

Internally we’re tracking this issue as PREL-11171.

If folks are noticing tweets which are geotagged and should be returned in search, but are not, please provide details: the search query being used and links to tweets which should be in the results but aren’t.

[lmudge]

We are still observing this bug where the search API does not fall back to profile location when tweets are not geocoded. Are their any updates on when this might be fixed? Are there any geographical limits to this bug? We are in Australia.

[isaach]

Engineers are working on it, but I’ve no update on ETA. There aren’t geographical limitations.

[lmudge]

I don’t want to harp on about this fault but we are currently using Twitter for situational awareness monitoring of wildfires in Australia at the moment and the geo limitation of the search API due to this fault are severely limiting this capability. Hoping that Twitter will treat this fault with greater priority as it is mission critical for us.

[firstaidshot]

I’d like to chime in here… This is a very important issue for my company (and me) as well. I’m glad to hear its something you’re continuing to work on, as we’d very much like to see it fixed. Thanks for keeping us updated! We’ll do something very nice for the person (or persons) who are able to resolve the issue!

[lmudge]

Carrot approach

[PhilipLJohnson]

It looks like Isaach is now badged as former twitter staff. His updates have been very helpful as we have worked to deal with this issue. Will someone else be taking over in this role?

[lampos]

Any updates on this issue? An updated timeline at least?

[andypiper]

Will someone else be taking over in this role?

We (team @TwitterDev) are all part of the community here, and continue to monitor and work on these issues. @isaach has been awesome, we will miss him!

Any updates on this issue? An updated timeline at least?

I’m afraid we don’t have updates on it right now.

As we’ve posted before - we really are aware of the issue; we are working on it; and there are many more moving parts than are visible. Anything that impacts our developer community is something that we take seriously. We’ll provide an update when we have something that we can share.

[SKHardcastle]

The ability to search out conversations based on geographic location is the only reasons I use Twitter for my business. It has been 2 months now, I would think this would be a top priority for Twitter? It would be helpful to know if this is something that will be resolved in another month or if its going to be more like half a year.

[jkgeyti]

Internally we’re tracking this issue as PREL-11171.

Is it possible to get any insight into the internal status of this issue?

[andypiper]

I can tell you that it is being worked on, but unfortunately we cannot share any further information at this time.

[MartinSoroka]

I’m sure you guys are working hard at this, but I really hope we see a fix soon! We are really being crippled at the moment by the lack of properly functioning geocode/location Twitter search!! Not being able to identify potential business opportunities is starting to costing us really money now!!

[azrael]

Completely agree. Would love love some feedback or eta on this.

[SimonjFreeman]

Hi. Just to chime in, this is not an unknown issue (it’s affected me before) but it looks to be taking much longer to fix than in the past: https://twittercommunity.com/t/geocode-search-volume-lower-than-expected/7815/44
As a journo I use the function to track ongoing crime in London - “gunshots” “sirens” “stabbing” etc - so, to raise the bar a bit, until it’s fixed people here are literally getting away with murder!
Is there anything we can do to help?

[ePirat]

It is really unfortunate that the old bugtracker that was really usefull to easily track status of these things was removed in favor of this forum… While this is a really nice forum, it can’t by far replace the bugtracker.

[bamba416]

Geo based searches are a fundamental feature of the API. After more than two months with them being out of commission but without an explanation or even a rough ETA, some transparency should be in order. I can’t understate the damage this outage this has done to our nascent startup. I would imagine many others are no less impacted.

Is a fix even in the pipeline? Is Twitter’s Gnip, or one of the other paid services, the only alternative at this point? Gnip openly claims their services are more reliable than the public APIs. Since those services carry such a large price tag I was really hoping to avoid pursuing that option. However, I’m beginning to feel that this outage may really be a nudge to move as many Twitter developers onto a paid tier. I hope I’m wrong. A rough ETA would be much appreciated (and is needed) now.

[markzohar]

Andy,

Can you provide any further update to the status and timing of a fix for this issue? It would be good to simply get a ballpark timeframe (days/weeks/months) so that we can inform our users and customers.

Thanks!