OSM's search system is sometimes quite strange

General talk
1

When I search for “深圳大学” (Shenzhen University) on OSM, it returns a result in Japan that has nothing to do with the university (P1). However, if I search for it in English, I can get the correct result (P2).
Additionally, if the university is already within my map window extent when I search for it, OSM can also return the correct result (P3).
I guess this issue occurs because the result in P1 has a name “大穴” (P4), which has the same pronunciation as “大学” in Chinese. However, what I searched for was “深圳大学”, and there are two campuses of Shenzhen University in OSM: “深圳大学 (粤海校区)” and “深圳大学 (丽湖校区)”. So why does OSM ignore them and choose “大穴” instead? I think this very strange.

P1
P1454×414 41.6 KB

P2
P2454×918 148 KB

P3
P3454×635 90.1 KB

P4
P4454×625 60.5 KB

2

I can’t really reproduce your results. Can you please redo the search, then click on “OpenStreetMap Nominatim” in the result box and post the link?

1 Like
3

I managed to reproduce this by centering the map over Europe and searching for 深圳大学:

image
image523×433 36.5 KB

It seems to happen if the map is centered far away from Asia. If the map is over Japan, I get the Shenzhen University Tokyo Campus instead:

image
image523×406 32.3 KB

4

I get that too, but…

When I do this, it jumps to the correct result (Shenzen University), and there is no reference at all to that Oana Pub.

1 Like
5

I tried OpenStreetMap Nominatim, and it can always return the correct result. However, when I use the search box on openstreetmap.org, the result often redirects to “Oana” (when the map center is in Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, Korea, Europe, or America).
Steps to reproduce the issue:

  1. Use the search box on openstreetmap.org instead of OpenStreetMap Nominatim.
  2. Ensure that Shenzhen is not in the map, you can zoom in to make the map level higher to achieve it.
  3. Set the map center outside Japan (otherwise, you will get “深圳大学東京校”).
6

yeah, openstreetmap and opemstreetmap nominatim can get different results.

7

Results depend on the part of the map you are looking at. Looks like the viewbox parameter is missing in the link to Nominatim. You need to give me the exact osm.org link where you where when searching.

9

深圳大学 | OpenStreetMap This is url

10

That is in most cases exactly what I would expect. If I have already zoomed in on a city then I don’t expect that data in another city appears at the top of the search results.

11

Thanks. This is an unfortunate combination of Chinese script and viewbox restrictions.

This needs some readjustment of Nominatim’s heuristics. I’ve opened Expected result estimate is off for chinese script · Issue #3688 · osm-search/Nominatim · GitHub