A site bug that kills local business for pros

MCcuddles2MCcuddles2
edited August 2021 in General

So I discovered a bug. If you are a pro, and located in a city, your distance might change exactly to "101" miles, causing you to lose all local business.

What this means is that you don't appear in most searches in your city, because most people are looking for "within 100 miles" at the most.

I discovered the bug, and helped a few pros in my area reset their location. Before this, they were getting zero hits from Houston, which is strange because it's a huge market.

Here is how you fix it:

1) Edit profile and go to your location.
2) Set your location as a different city.
3) Save and exit out of the screen.
4) Go back to edit profile.
5) Reset your location to your city.
6) Save and exit.

This resets the location and fixes the error, causing you to appear in searches again.

I posted this in "site recommendations" thread, but I think that this a pretty significant thing and it's probably destroying business for a lot of pros, so I wanted to post a thread in general where everyone can see it. Unfortunately, there is no way for a pro to realize this is happening to them, aside from the fact that all local hits stop.

(I don't know what causes the bug, but I suspect it has something to do with travelling out of the city and returning, and the location not resetting regardless of how long you've been back to your city)

Comments

  • NicoSnuggsNicoSnuggs

    Thank you for sharing this @MCcuddles2

  • SideonSideon

    @Mark and @Gary - take a look, please?

  • TheFunCartelTheFunCartel

    @MCcuddles2 Actually this bug is pretty unique to the Houston market and it is weird. I travel all over and I know some people in Houston but I sometimes would only see a few because it was defaulting to a zip code in that area. It only happens in Houston.

  • MarkMark

    Thanks, we're looking into it.

  • NYCLatnGuyNYCLatnGuy
    edited August 2021

    @Mark and @Gary This is actually not unique to Houston. There is a similar bug for people who have New York as their location, some of them show a distance of 137 miles from the city, even though they are in or near NYC, and their profiles say New York, NY— an example of this is @brookylnn

  • mtpmtp

    @NYCLatnGuy It's likely using the state capital as the location instead of the specific city. @brooklynn, like many others who live in NYC, is listed as 25 miles away from me (the approximate distance that I live from Albany).

  • lefteeleftee

    Maybe this is unrelated, but I noticed in the last couple of weeks when I searched I was finding a lot more people locally. Maybe there is an issue with search that fixed things for some but made things worse for others?

  • CuddleDuncanCuddleDuncan

    If you try to enter your location as New York you get three options:-

    United States, New York
    United States, New York, New York, New York
    United States, New York, New York

    These are presumably lifted from the gazetteer the site uses.

    Now I know where United States, New York is, and United States, New York, New York. But where is United States, New York, New York, New York?

  • mtpmtp

    New York, New York, New York must be where Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

  • OhioMikeOhioMike

    Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! :)

  • MCcuddles2MCcuddles2

    New york, new york, its it's a helluva town

  • deefinedeefine

    I'm sure it's a maps API bug or 100.# being rounded up, but I was trying to figure out how an algorithm even determines that and it's blowing my mind 😆 I suppose it calculates using latitude and longitude and there's some floating point rounding or limiting going on in the JavaScript, I don't know.

  • NYCLatnGuyNYCLatnGuy

    @CuddleDuncan Manhattan is technically New York City, New York County, New York State

  • CuddleDuncanCuddleDuncan

    @NYCLatnGuy thank you! Well I suppose with that username you should know!

  • Mela_BMela_B

    Thank you for sharing this!

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