July 20, 2022
QoL Update: Property Search
We are excited to announce a Quality of Life update that should improve the way Uplanders search for properties. Starting today, the in-game property search will provide more accurate and faster results. Be sure to update your Upland app to get the latest version. There are a few notable changes that may affect how you use the search so read on below to learn more.
Powered by Google
The in-game property search is now powered by Google Search instead of Mapbox Search. While Mapbox Search was suitable for addresses in the United States, we found that it had limitations internationally and that Google Search provides a better service. We are excited to use Google Search to help us prepare for Upland’s international expansion. In addition, with the power of Google, it should be easier to locate points of interest in Upland. For example, searching for “Coit Tower” will now return “Coit Tower” instead of just an address.
(Left) The old search showed address-only results. (Right) The new search shows the point of interest name and location.
Global Search
The new search will scan the entire world for the address or point of interest that you are searching for and return the top 5 results. While this is robust, it may bring up several locations that are not currently available in Upland. These addresses that are not in Upland are “grayed” out. To better find the location you are looking for in Upland, we recommend that you be more specific in your search such as adding a city or state to the search field to narrow the results search.
(Left) The old search showed multiple results with some unrelated results. (Right) New search shows desired search location and invalid results “grayed” out.
No Dead Zones (hopefully)
We are aware that certain locations in Upland were plagued by poor search. These locations such as many properties in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles were simply not searchable. With this update, areas like Venice are now searchable and can easily be found and explored. We encourage you to try searches that were problematic before to see if they have been improved.
(Left) The old search did not show the correct valid address. (Right) The new search shows the desired search location.
As we roll out this update, we would love your help to identify cases where the search is not working as expected. Please report these situations to our team on Discord in the #technical-bugs channel. We hope that this update will help make Upland more responsive, give better search results, and improve the overall Upland experience.