If you look for some places with search, sometimes it gives a random isolated dwelling or even a building instead of a big city. Is there anything that could be done to the issue?
Example?
Nominatim (the OSM search engine) has made various tweaks to improve the ranking of search results over time. I believe it takes Wikipedia/Wikidata links into account, for example, and there’s currently a project to further improve the sense of a place’s “importance” by considering map views: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/tareqpi/diary/399655
As mappers, there’s not much we can/should do except make sure that the places are correctly mapped and have attributes such as wikipedia/wikidata links if they exist.
Searching for the term “Järvenpää”.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=j%C3%A4rvenp%C3%A4%C3%A4#map=14/60.4326/23.8453
There is currently one city on the planet called Järvenpää. The rest are many locations with less than 10 buildings.
First it give the list above, sending me to Nummi-Pusula area: https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4867636399.
The only city called Järvenpää was listed as the second and another random place in Joensuu area as forth.
I made a new search, suddenly the forth place was number one:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/8767582089
The previous number one is now forth.
The results are changing from search to search but never give the only city on the planet with that name Järvenpää: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/36107
I know this is not the main question, but some of the other places called Järvenpää look strangely mapped. Place=village and place=hamlet should refer to actual settlements where people live, some of these nodes don’t seem to fit that. Perhaps they should be place=locality?
I am finding that I always get the “real” Järvenpää as the first listing if I search via https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/. I don’t know why the order is different compared to the main openstreetmap page.
There appears to be different modes.
I have noticed this issue. It can be problematic with https://overpass-turbo.eu/ as this does not seem to use the main database. If I search for “Dublin” it suggests the main train stations or the airport or various towns in the USA, not the city in Ireland.
When searching the main map for Järvenpää, this is the first response I get https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/36107
While editing, the search will return the nearest thing called Järvenpää, In Helsinki, this might be something called Järvenpää Street (well, the equivalent of this).