Hi Giacomo,
Radius searches (using the "within" parameter) are a little tricky
due to the way we handle locations and geolocation calculations.
We've tuned the location parsing in order to "do the right thing"
based on the locations entered by most users. Specifically:
- When you specify "Seattle" as the location, we choose the Seattle
metro area for your search. Because a metro covers a wide area and
usually doesn't have a reasonably-defined center, we ignore the
"within" parameter for metro searches. Practically speaking, this
means that many common searches ignore the "within" parameter.
- For searches with a more defined geolocation (like a postal code or
a smaller city) the "within" parameter does come into play, but that
value has some limits in order to keep the searches fast. Values
should be between 5 and 100 miles/km, and the distance calculation is
an approximate one. Still, it catches common cases like "within 100
km of Toulouse" and does the right thing. (http://eventful.com/events?
within_units=100+km&q=&l=Toulouse)
- Because of both of these, we can't really offer distance sorting
with any reasonable results. I see that our documentation mentions a
distance sort, but that was just an oversight. Sorry for the confusion.
I hope that clears things up a little. Let me know if you have any
questions. (BTW, posting to the developers' list is the best thing to
do. This way our conversation is available to others, and someone
else might answer your question before I can.)
Cheers,
~chris
On Sep 11, 2007, at 8:19 AM, Giacomo Lo Giusto wrote:
Dears
I'm playing with the within parameter. Is it normal that if the
location
is 'Seattle' and within is set to 3000000 and sort_order is
'distance' I still get only the Seattle events?? (maybe you have
already
answered saying "it isn't possible to group or order the results by
location or distance. " but what it means sort_order = distance then?)
Cheers
