[Photon] search observation / restrictions

[Hannes.REUTER at ec.europa.eu]

Hi, 

Dear Photon community, 

Thanks for providing such an interesting tool. We observed some issue and wondered if you can help out. 

If one types Petersburg and Saint Petersburg the suggestions are somehow unexpected. 
If we type <<Saint Petersburg>> the 'Port of SP' appears first, without the Russian <<Saint Petersburg>> appearing at all(screenshot Search2), while if someone types <<Petersburg>>, Saint Petersburg/Russia appears first, while the most similar? one appears at number three. 

Is that expected behaviour, especially under the assumption that the place location where the search window at that moment was located is Dessau(Germany). Is there any distance threshold involved.   

We tried to limit the search with the lat long parameter as documented in the API, but 
http://photon.komoot.de/api/?q=Petersburg&limit=4&lat=40.977005492196&lon=-100.322509765625, 
but observed that the first record is still the Russian city of Saint Petersburg while one would expect that a Petersburg in America  is suggested as a first.  
Is that expected behaviour ? Same question - is there any distance threshold/weighting involved.   

Last but not least - what would be the expected behaviour for filter based on countries. According to the docu(https://github.com/komoot/photon) one would be able to restrict somehow like 
http://photon.komoot.de/api?q=berlin&osm_tag=country_code:Belgium or the http://photon.komoot.de/api?q=petersburg&osm_tag=country_code:Russia
However we seem to receive results from many countries (Russia+USA). Can I kindly ask for an example with a correct call? Or do we need to be more restrictive, and explicit exclude all other countries ? 

Thanks for help

Hannes
 


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