Have been trying to search for specific taxa observations from Guangdong Province, China, only to find the searchs (all taxa searched for) swamped by observations from Hong Kong. I have been using the location filter for the search, not the bounding box, yet when the filter is applied the result screen shows “bounding box”, not “Guangdong” as the search area, even though the location filter selected is “Guangdong, China”.
Is this an error of the boundary mapping for Guangdong, or is there a problem with the search filter, please?
I suggest that instead of using the location box in Explore, you tap the filters button and choose “Guangdong CN” in the “place” filters. That seems to restrict the location to Guangdong Province.
As I understand it, the Location box uses Google Maps designations of locations, but the “places” fliter uses places created for iNaturalist, so they don’t always match. It’s confusing.
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Thx Janet. Baffling!
I agree it’s confusing and can be improved, but the reasoning behind the prominent Location filter searching Google Maps is that iNat will never have the number of place names that Google Maps has, so by searching Google Maps you will almost always get near the area you want to find. You can then use the “Places of Interest” button to look for iNat places in the map.
But yes, I agree this flow is not apparent and overal it’s confusing.
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@tiwane - Many thanks for that, Tony. Useful and appreciated.
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