Printable View
I used the search function in the com.nokia.maps.search.PlaceSearchRequest of the Maps API. I entered "restaurants", "food", "fast food", "restaurant", "eat" as the categories but it sometimes returns other places that are not eating places. And the returned places of the function are different from the ones from maps.nokia.com (sometimes less).
Is this normal? Thank You :)
Hi Aldaneqwertyuiop,
[QUOTE]And the returned places of the function are different from the ones from maps.nokia.com (sometimes less)[/QUOTE]
It seems that a [I]PlaceSearchRequest[/I] typically provides results after some filtering and uses a [I]GeoArea[/I] instance as criteria. A GeoArea can either be a [I]GeoBoundingBox[/I] or [I]GeoBoundingCircle[/I]. As an end user, you do not define similar filtering when using maps.nokia.com, but the application retrieves your zoom level and the display area's frame to show relevant to that area results (you will notice that when using the same search keyword and moving to a different map region you receive different results from the browser). Given that the defined GeoArea filtering in your custom Maps application, doesn't coincide with the out-of-the-box filtering that occurs in the browser, it would be expected (to some extend) to receive different search results.
As for getting non relevant results from your search, it seems that some locations (POI) contain metadata such as a description, where your keyword might be used, but the POI itself might not be relevant to that text. That's why you do not always get relevant results. Relevancy is sometimes defined within a context (a hotel can have a restaurant, or a museum can be associated to the "eat" keyword), so search can not be 100% optimal for a given context.
However, if you can provide some concrete search results that you have received along with the GeoArea and keywords you used, I could further forward your feedback to the Nokia Maps team.