When I Explore and want to search the location “Benbrook,” instead I get results for Benbrook Lake, which includes part (but not all) of the City of Benbrook, but also parts of Fort Worth and unincorporated Tarrant County. Even when I type Benbrook, and the search box pops up the suggestion of “Benbrook, TX” if I click the suggestion it takes me to Benbrook Lake instead of the city. The only way I can explore the city of Benbrook is to go to places then search for Benbrook, then select the Town of Benbrook.
Is there a way to search the explore location box for the city of Benbrook?
Or is there some way I can modify the Benbrook Lake place so it doesn’t show up by default when searching for Benbrook?
there are actually 2 ways to filter for locations on the Explore page. the way i usually do it is to click on filters > more filters, and then input a place. that is a little more reliable, in my opinion, than using the location box next to the species box. at some point, they’re going to revamp the Explore screen, and i hope at that point, the location/place filter boxes will be merged, helping to eliminate some common confusion.
The reason you get that result is that the “Location” box searches Google Maps place names, something iNat has no control over, while the “Place” filter searches Places that have been created in iNaturalist. For major divisions like countries, states, and counties, it’s usually the same but local place-names often don’t match between the two systems.
If there’s a place you want to look at frequently, you can subscribe to that place. In the right sidebar on your homepage, there’s a button to subscribe to a place. You can also filter by taxon for the place, for example, you can just see bird observations in your town. Then that place will show in your list of subscriptions.
Thanks for some of those tips and the information! I haven’t used the place filter much, so that looks like the best solution for me.
It still doesn’t explain why I search for Benbrook in the location bar, if the system is searching Google place names, then shouldn’t it default to Benbrook (town) rather than Benbrook Lake? But @pisum said iNaturalist will be merging the search location and place at some point, so maybe that will fix it.
