Thursday, June 16, 2011

New filters on searches

One of the most common requests to improve Wikiloc which many users ask for is definitely improving the search for trails existing on the system. It is difficult (or, rather, long) to find trails based on criteria such as the type of activity, distance or trail difficulty. We knew it was a necessary improvement but we have not been able to put it on the system for quite some time. But search filters are finally here!



In the last few days on all search pages and listings of trails you have on the left side of the screen different filters that can be applied to fine-tune searches and quickly reach the trails you're interested in. The filters which can be applied are:

- Loop trails or just one way
- Trail distance
- Type of activity
- Difficulty
- Origin of the track (GPS, mobile, hand-drawn)

In addition to those new filters there's another feature added in the search results. Now these results can be sorted according to three different criteria :

- Popularity : the 'best' trail first (a 'best trail' means having a higher quality track, a good description and title, many visits, pictures and videos added, etc)
- Relevance : first the trails with the search criteria in the title, description, etc.
- Upload date : the latest added trails on top of the list

Also note that you can activate an activity as the search criteria by the default in all searches. That is, if you have set it up that you like climbing, on the searches you do (provided that you are logged in the system) will focus only on climbing trails, and the results will show up only this type of trails (you can then modify the criteria to broaden it up to more activity types). To set the default activity in searches you must select the activity on your user profile.

We hope this is going to help you find the best trails in the world!