Search API returning (very) sparse geocode results

[lampos]

Any updates on this? We will soon be reaching Q3. Have you decided to kill the Search API? No need to keep us around waiting, if that is the case.

[bamba416]

Even if they fix it at this point, I’m not sure it matters. I don’t know how anyone could rely on Twitter as a reliable source of data after watching them let it go on for this long without a real commitment to getting it fixed. The developer outreach on this has been terrible. Why did it require 3 months to get Andy to finally offer only a vague response that Twitter has it on their backlog and will take a look at it some time within the next two to five months? To be clear, I don’t want this to sound like I’m blaming any one individual. Andy is just one person who I’m sure is terribly busy and is just trying to do his best to keep us informed whenever he has a little spare time. The fault clearly lies with Twitter as a company which pays only lip service to developer outreach. Since I as a 3rd party dev obviously have no insight into how deep this problem goes, I take Andy and Isaach at their word that the outage is not easily solvable. However, if the company really considered this a priority, we would certainly not be here 6 months later without any idea if Twitter is even engaged.

[rchoi]

Hi SKHardcastle,

This is Ryan from the Developer Advocacy team at Twitter. I work alongside Andy on all things API.

The Foursquare partnership has not and should not have an effect here either way. We have a bug that we’re working through, and getting it resolved has taken longer than expected. I apologize for that.

I’m sorry to hear that you’re no longer recommending Twitter to clients. That’s our problem to bear, and we do understand that your business and others rely on this. We are working to correct, but it may take some time longer.

Sorry again for the inconvenience, and we do plan on coming up with a resolution, but no timetable is currently set. We will certainly post an update here to all the eager people waiting for an answer.

Thanks for your post,

Ryan

[rchoi]

Hi bamba416,

Ryan here from the Developer Advocacy team. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and frustrations. I understand how the issue itself is bothersome, but the lack of communication only compounds it. I apologize for this.

We’ve logged a ticket and are working alongside the eng team to bring awareness and help prioritize. I can’t say when it will be addressed because I do not know, but both Andy and I are eager to get this resolved for all of us. (As developers who ourselves built a ton of code and help partners, we’re eager to see fixes go out.)

I’m certain this is not a satisfying reply, but I do want you to know that you are heard and we are trying to help bring a fix here.

In all sincerity, thanks again for sharing, and we’ll report back here anything we do find.

Ryan

[rchoi]

Lampos,

Thanks for a bit of humor here. Genuinely appreciated.

We certainly are not killing the Search API. It is an issue we’ve logged, and it’s taken longer than I have certainly expected it would.

I promise we are working on it, and will reply when we have more information. Promise.

[rchoi]

@markzohar,

On behalf of Andy and the team here at Twitter, we apologize for the issue.

Our team has looked at this, and they’re still considering ways to fix this, both long and short term. I don’t know if it will be addressed in the timeframe Andy previously mentioned, but we are working with the eng team and will post whatever news we hear back on this thread.

Again, I apologize for the trouble, and we would love to see it fixed on your behalf. We’ll keep at it.

[NateMQ]

So over 6 months in and we still just get vague “we’re working alongside our engineers” and “considering ways to fix this” type of answers?

Has this been escalated within the Twitter organization? Does the executive leadership team just not care that the search API, which has a huge impact on 3rd party developers, has been broken since November and no one has done anything about it?

What caused the the search API to break?

How many hours have been dedicated thus far to trying to fix this?

What is the priority around this? Are there too many other major defects in front of this in the backlog? What are those issues?

Please respond with actual information. While I appreciate the acknowledgments and apologies, they just aren’t that helpful.

Thank you.

[NateMQ]

Just checking back in for an update…

[Euklidian_Space]

Thought I might throw my hat into the ring so to speak. I have been trying to get tweets from a specific geo location, namely columbus ohio, that mention any of the individuals running in 2016 presidential race. Considering this has been a battleground state for the past few elections one would think that some twitter buzz might be occurring. However apparently there are ZERO THATS RIGHT ZERO TWEETS that mention any of the candidates within a 500 mile radius of columbus ohio. Please fix this

[LukeInTH]

Its been 8 months now and different timelines for it being fixed have been and gone. Now all we get is a vague “were considering it” update. Still no sign of progress. Perhaps its time to update the docs to say twitter api doesn’t have working geo search. Please fix this soon we have been waiting and waiting.

[SimonjFreeman]

OMFG. Do we have life?

https://twitter.com/search?q=asparagus%20geocode%3A51.5073000%2C-0.1275500%2C20km%20-rt%20-filter%3Aretweet&src=typd&vertical=default&f=tweets

(London likes asparagus.)

[johnbarratt]

Seems this has improved for the web search (not sure if that was broken or not actually?), but alas the equivalent search via the API still only returns tweets with explicit geo entries, or retweets of those with explicit geo entries.

Can someone at Twitter confirm if this is a step in the direction to fixing the API, or that in fact this web based search was never broken?

Thanks,

JB.

[nicktaylor3]

Web search was never broken (which makes this all the more bizarre), I’m not seeing any improvement in API results.

[StellaMiaR]

not true. web search was definitely broken. for a long time too. Seems to have started working again maybe six weeks ago.

[markzohar]

Hey Ryan,

Can you provide an update on this. It’s bananas that this issue remains unresolved after 7 months!!! If you have no plans to fix location search in the API just say so. It’s incredibly frustrating to see that location search is now working in the web interface but remains broken in the Search API.

[RT_Tracker]

Any update on when this issue will be resolved? Thanks.

[markzohar]

“I understand how the issue itself is bothersome, but the lack of communication only compounds it. I apologize for this.”

It’s been almost two months since your last communication on this issue. Can we please get an update!

[jimboWelsh]

Hey all, just use a flat keyword search by country and filter down to the geographic area you were looking for within the results. If you can geocode quickly you should get as much data as you ever did while using way less queries. Further, the coordinate+radius based geolocations were always fuzzy, so it won’t really change the quality of what you’re getting.

[markzohar]

So that’s it then, I suppose. No responses. No updates. No fixes. Just a bunch of empty words and mea culpas.

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

[ZWellmer]

Can you post an example of what you mean by a flat keyword search by country. I don’t see anything in the Docs that allows you to search for tweets by country unless you specify coordinates and a radius. Are you talking about looking at the place attribute that is associated with tweets(even though this is often empty)?