I’ve run a search this morning for Croydon, UK.
The first result is for Barnet, which as you can see, is madness:
Via the M25, which is the fastest route on Google Maps, it’s 59 miles away.
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Don’t even get me started on what the search function offers for Seattle. The three specific locations it suggests do not actually exist (Seattle Hill, Seattle Hill-Silver Firs, and Seattle Heights). The other options are West Seattle, South Seattle, City of Seattle, and Seattle WA.
Doing a search for any of these 6 locations nets you the same 171 to 175 sits right now. These include cities like Port Townsend, which are HOURS from Seattle and require you to take a ferry to even get there. Honestly, because of ferry delays and epic traffic, nobody does same-day trips from Pt Townsend to Seattle and back.
There are many other distant locations included, on islands and peninsulas or up in the Cascade Mountains, which require travel on ferries or difficult, often-closed roads. The inclusion of such remote rural listings under Seattle is a cruel joke for any sitter hoping to actually see the city.
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I have seen a zero applications label and actually applied to one of those.
I agree on the distance issue. I am trying to find housesits in the UK and I won’t have a car with me and my searches always show things that are an hour away from where I want to be, and I have to spend so much time going back and forth with my maps app to see where it really is. For some reason if I use the maps in TH itself they are really quirky and don’t work well for me.
I would really love if there was a filter that showed “close to public transportation” .
@Betsy this is happening with searches for New York City too. You get Connecticut, and New Jersey. There should be a strictly NYC search function. Then the ability to search further if desired.
I have concluded the search function certainly in terms of location is really not fit for purpose and needs some serious work done on it to make it work. For example today I searched ‘London’ - there are 409 sits, I searched ‘Greater London’ and there are 37 sits of which 16 appear to be in the centre and then finally ‘City of London’ and there are 408 covering an area well outside of one hours travel from the ‘City’. If these inconsistencies cannot be addressed then surely it would be better to just have one location search for the city called ‘London’ rather than this very misleading and frustrating process. It seems similar issues arise with other cities too given what others have said. Surely this function is key to the efficient working of the site and should be prioritised in any planned schedule of website improvements? However this has been raised a number of times and as far as I am aware there has not been any clear response from the THS team as to when and what might be done to improve this.
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After all the frustration over city search results that include locations far away from the city center, it’s a pleasant discovery to see that we can now filter these results by distance. I tried it with a few cities, and the first results are indeed within (or at least very close to) the city limits. Then as you scroll through the results, you start seeing the ones that are farther and farther away.
This is a HUGE improvement over previous city search functionality.
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I live in a suburb of Antwerp, Belgium. My zip code (2100) covers about 80.000 people…I guess the concept “zip code” is completely different by country. My family in the Netherlands has a situation that is comparable to the UK.
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I’m not seeing the improvement.
I searched Nashua, NH and got
Medford, MA…Newburyport, MA & Boston, MA as the top 3 results.
These top 3 results are an hour away from Nashua, NH (not including traffic) and require a car.
Hi @HelloOutThere
If you search a particular City, and go to the Sort button, it will bring up the distance button to apply
The distance option is only available at the city level, and it orders the sits by distance to the city. (ie sits at the top are closest to the city). This change also increases the radius of the search to 70 km when searching at city level.
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Thank you for that. I was overall not clear in my inital post… I was just trying to be short and sweet.
New Hampshire brings up 10 sits…all NH.
Nashua, NH brings up 21 sits…not very accurate cuz if not not from around here…some of those sits are just NOT related to NH or Nashua NH.
Nashua NH with sort distance brings up 21 sits. First 4 listings are NH then the rest of the listings are MA. The other 6 NH are not shown. The distance feature is not at all accurate.
Again if you’re not from this area, you would not know some of those sits are not what you would be looking for if you want to stay not only in New Hampshire but Nashua New Hampshire.
I just understand that I would be very very communicative about where a sit is located in relation to an area that I’m looking to visit and use Rome to Rio.
It would be my 1st conversation topic since I would not want to get to involved in a conversation if the sit location is not at all what I am looking for. This way I can be respectful of a homeowner’s time and my time in the process.
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Yes, sitters should always ask the distance from the area listed so as to not have any “surprises” when they arrive.
Has anyone found a hack to search for sits in NEW YORK CITY without seeing Connecticut and New Jersey!?
Signed a frustrated sitter
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Let me know too!
@ExploreDreamDiscover Thanks for pointing this out. I also have a New York city saved search and you can now filter by distance, so I thought that would help, but it doesn’t seem to change the filter results?
Update - The distance filter will show all of the NYC sits first then the next ones out and so on. So checking, for now, using the filter the only NYC one available is in Brooklyn, then it shows the next ones out which are in NJ and so on.
So if you use that filter you will see all of the NYC ones first
I can get that result using
City of New York, US
Region
But not when using
New York City, New York, US,
City
I would have thought to use the latter.
I guess that’s the hack.
@ExploreDreamDiscover Great discovery. I just played around on mine and it’s the same.
Yes, you have found the hack and I will still pass this on to see if there is a reason. I wonder if one can be removed or if they serve different purposes? Thanks for pointing this out and let me see what the team says.
@Carla
Ask about these too.
- Manhattan, New York, US
City
- Manhattan Park, New York, US
City
- Downtown Manhattan, New York, US
City
- Manhattanville, New York, US
I would like to see the search for New York City cleaned up. IMO New York City is Manhattan and the boroughs. I go to NYC several times a year, before I joined THS and without THS to see family, etc…
