"Revised" Search and sorting "logic" has left me dazed and confused

As a long-time member (over 75 reviews) and a frequent traveler, I have depended on this site to assist me with locating RV parks, especially when planning trips to unfamiliar parts of the country. I used to look up a "city, state," view the RV parks and use "nearby cities" function to look for more choices. Even though the description of the nearby city's location wasn't always accurate (example: 15 miles NW when it was really 15 miles S) at least I could check my atlas to locate the town. With the latest revision, I'm not sure what's going on. For example, I can look up a park by name and the "bread crumb" links indicate it is in a certain city (as is the mailing address for the park,) but when I select that city on the "bread crumb" link, the park doesn't show up at all. Yet, parks in other cities are listed, even though I didn't search for parks in those cities.

This is a very frustrating situation for me (and for others who have posted their similar dislike on the Tiffin forum I am a member of.) That no announcement of this dramatic change (or explanation of how these functions now "work") was communicated is causing me to look elsewhere for park listings and reviews. Perhaps someone can explain this to me, as I'm reluctant to post any further reviews for a site that I now find very awkward to use.

 

Could you please elaborate a bit or provide a specific example? The system should function exactly as you describe. There shouldn't be any parks that can't be found by looking up the city in which they are located. If you look up the name of a park, the system will tell you what city it is in. If you look up that city, it should be there. Please provide an example for which this isn't the case.

 

Here's an example: from the home page, select "Texas;" then choose "Alpine." You will see several parks located in Alpine and several in Marfa, Fort Davis, Balmorea and Marathon (in no particular order) listed, even though you didn't ask for them. (You might select one of them mistakenly thinking it is in Alpine, when it is not. You will also have the same towns listed as "nearby cities." One of the Alpine parks not listed is Stillwell Store and RV Park. However, if you use the "search" box and type in Stillwell Store, a listing for that park comes up, showing it to be located in Alpine-- way too confusing for me!
This is not the way the site used to work. When you looked for a particular city, you got the parks for that city only and links to cities close by, not the parks in those cities.

 

Without being argumentative, the parks listed are NOT in no particular order, they are in order of increasing distance from Alpine and both the distance and city they are in are clearly shown. Many people look for a park in one town and often find parks in nearby towns that are suitable for them to stay at. If you only want to stay in Alpine, simply ignore the listings beyond the distance you are interested in.

This does appear to be an error for this one park and we appreciate you bringing it to our attention. It has now been reported as a bug so our programming team can correct it

Yes, this is a change from the way things were but it is consistent with the way many search engines operate. We have found that most people are interested in staying "near" a particular city but, in reality, they are interested in staying within a given distance from it. They really don't care if they stay in that city or one that is nearby. So limiting searches to just a specific city can be more confusing since it may omit nearby parks solely because they have a different mailing address.

For example, in the area just south of Chattanooga TN there are excellent parks located in Georgia that are literally still in the metro area. When you see such parks listed in order of distance this is very clear but you might not think to click on a link to a city in Georgia that you have never heard of and which sounds a long way away from staying in Tennessee!

Similarly, try finding a park near Elkhart IN as many RVers do in order to get factory repairs. I wasn't aware until we were there a few months ago that Elkhart, South Bend, Mishawaka and Shipshiwana are so close to one another that they are essentially a single metro area. Searching for parks by specific town would be far more confusing than having them listed by distance.

Change is always difficult when you are accustomed to using a site in a certain way, but I'm sure you will find that it isn't so difficult to get used to our slightly changed approach. Thanks for being an RVParkReviews user.

Joel (AKA docj)

 

Don't you think it would have been appropriate for you to have communicated this change to minimize confusion?

 

As you are aware, this website underwent a major revision ~18 months ago and has been engaged in incremental upgrading and "bug fixes" ever since. It is simply not practical to explain each and every change that has been made.

As I said previously, the way we present our search results is pretty much the same approach as used by many search sites. The search results are presented in order of increasing distance from the city you specify and the city location of each park is clearly shown on the summary list. I don't know how we could have explained it any more clearly than the way the data is presented. A list of nearby cities is still listed on the left side of the page. The ONLY difference is whether or not parks in those nearby cities are included in the list or have to be clicked on one city at a time.

It would seem as if we've made the task of finding a park easier rather than harder. I'm sorry you don't see it that way.

 

Well, I might be more likely to "see it that way" if the information presented in your "revision" was accurate. While providing distances is helpful, providing the wrong direction is not helpful at all. In the Alpine TX example I presented earlier, all of the parks in Marfa are listed as being NE of Alpine. Having traveled extensively in West Texas and driven by them, I can assure you that these parks are closer to being WSW of Alpine-- the complete opposite direction.

Perhaps you think I am being overly critical. However, as a longtime user, I just want the site to be as accurate and easy to use as possible. I hope we can agree on that.

 

Now I think we may be looking at different screens and I'd like to get to the bottom of this.

Here's what I see when I ask for a list of parks near Alpine TX:



Notice that the park in Marfa has a distance but no direction.

Here is the first page of parks that I get when I ask for parks in Marfa. Look at the list of cities on the left side. Notice that Marfa is correctly shown as being SW of Alpine.



You must be looking at another screen where it is shown as being to the NE. Please direct me to that screen.

 

Yes, I must be looking at a different screen. How I got there was by going to the home page, clicking on the map of Texas, then scrolling through the list of cities until I got to Alpine and selecting it. I just tried it again and got the same result. To clarify, this is the page containing the listing of parks for Alpine that came up using the method just explained.

 

Let's step through this slowly. If I click on Alpine in the list of Texas cities:




Then the next screen I see is this:



Where are you seeing that Marfa is NE of Alpine?

 

Ok, I figured it out. See the following screenshot:



Marfa is correctly shown as a city to the SW of Alpine but if you were standing at that park, Alpine would be to the NE of you. This definitely is confusing. I will get it fixed. Thanks for helping me find the problem.

Joel

 

I'm glad that we're finally getting on the right page-- no pun intended! It's interesting to note that on the page I brought up for Alpine using the sequence I earlier outlined, all of the parks listed show to be to the NE, even the ones in Alpine. Woodward Ranch is definitely south of Alpine.

I did a similar search for Big Bend National Park and all of the RV parks also show to be NE of Big Bend National Park, even though some of the campgrounds actually within Big Bend are at opposite ends of the national park.

However, if one does a search for San Antonio TX, every park in the listing shows to be to the NW, including those actually in San Antonio and all of the surrounding cities, which certainly isn't the case.

It's pretty obvious this "glitch" is not exclusive to Alpine.

Not trying to pile on-- just hope this additional information will help you get things sorted out.

 

The issue with national parks is different from the rest. A number of years ago a decision was made to list all the CGs in a national park as being under a consolidated park listing. But the system insists that the "park" has to have a single physical location. Especially for the larger parks this creates the problem you have noted. The problem at Big Bend is similar to what I first noticed at Olympic NP which is an enormous park in Washington State. The "park" is huge and the location of the CGs has no relationship to the park's location which is pegged as Port Angeles.

 

On a somewhat related note, adding a "Show On Map" option for searches & sorting, rather than just a list, would be appreciated. It's a common feature on websites for hotels, restaurants & other public accommodations, so it's likely to be popular here, too.

 

I agree and I'd like to add "search around a location" instead of just from center of a city. That way if you want to find parks near a particular place within a large city it would be easier.

 

I also have some confusion when using the search function, and some of it may be user error, so please help me understand these results:

1) On the homepage I type in "Buena" and I get a list which includes "Buena Vista, Colorado" and I select this. The page re-populates, and in a blue box it says "25 results". Under Suggested Cities, there is a list of several cities, including "Buena Vista CO 65 parks". Why the difference?

2) From here, lets say I want to find a park in the area that has a electric hookups, so I select the "yes" box on the optional filters for electric hookup. I get 6 results. Then I uncheck this box and I now get 9 results. What happened to the 25?

3) Following the same example above in #1, I search for campgrounds near Buena Vista CO and get the same results. Lets say I want to expand the search outward from 25 miles to 50 miles, so I change the 25 to 50 in the miles option and click the green "Go" button. I now get "No campgrounds found. Search again".

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Chris G.

 

The Search Engine is a "work in progress". We have made quite a few recent improvements to it and, unfortunately, those have created and/or exacerbated some bugs. Your patience is appreciated

You are referring to the "25" which shows up here:



If you count the parks that are displayed on the three pages of results you will see that there are 25 of them. But you should note that they do not all have Buena Vista mailing addresses. Some parks with addresses for other towns are close enough to Buena Vista to be in this list.

These 25 are the list of parks within 25 miles of Buena Vista. If you increase the search radius to 50 miles you will find that there are "56" parks (not 65) listed (I'll get to why you couldn't do this in a moment) Yes, this is inconsistent with the 65 in city list but it is consistent with the number of parks shown here:

The 9 parks that are listed here are the parks that have actual Buena Vista addresses, not the ones that are in the search radius. The search has become a Boolean search with Buena Vista now being a requirement, not simply the center of a search. If you check the 6 parks you got when the box was checked you would find that they are ONLY Buena Vista parks also.

This one has a relatively simply explanation. When you clicked on Buena Visa in the popup list the search you got back looked like this:



You probably didn't notice the extra "Colorado" that I've circled in red. If you change the search radius to 50 mi without removing that extra word you will get back a null result. If you remove the extra word you will get the 56 parks with the 50 mi radius as I showed in the first screen shot.

I hope I've cleared up some of the confusion, but I apologize that the system is this messed up and difficult to use.

Joel

 

Thanks joel! This is some useful information that will help me work around some of the issues.

 

I'm with you, Phaeton40. As another frequent user, I can't stand the new site.

 

We're sorry you don't like our new format. It would be far more helpful to our programming team if you could identify specific aspects of the site that trouble you. We seriously consider all sincere user suggestions, but please understand that going back to the prior format and associated software is simply not an option.