Geocaching Quick Search

The Story

This tool was created to compensate for the cumbersome search on geocaching.com. A long time ago I requested that a multi-functional search box be put at the top of every page. I got annoyed that to search you have to wait for a huge page to load, then scroll down to the keyword search, which is what I want most of the time.

This was even more frustrating when trying to look up cache details wirelessly on my phone. Therefore, this page is optimized for quick loading, especially on mobile devices. For known wireless devices, it will use the printer-friendly version of the page rather than the full one. If your wireless device doesn't go to the right place, please let me know.

Smart Searching

GQS will look at the search and try to guess the format of it. Here are the formats that it will recognize and where it will send you:

Format Pattern Example Destination
US Zip Code 5 digits 90025 Caches in that zip code
UK Postal Code 2-4 numbers, 2 numbers/letters,
separated by a space
EC1V 9HQ Caches in that postal code
US Area Code 3 digits 415 Caches in that area code
Waypoint Starts with "GC" GCMGWM The cache's information page
Waypoint (Geocaching Australia) Starts with "GA", then 4 digits GA0088 The cache's information page
Geocaching "GUID" Ugly string of numbers and letters 793d0999-a667-405a-b530-4339ee488ac8 The cache's information page
Travel Bug (by number) 6 digits 315027 The Travel Bug's Page
Travel Bug (by ID) Starts with "TB" TB8D2B The Travel Bug's page
Swaggie (Australian Travel Bug) Starts with "SW" SW0001 The Swaggie's information page
Coordinates coordinate string N37 13.487 W121 58.582
or 37.224783 -121.976367
Boulter.com Coordinate Map and Info Page for those coordinates
Keyword (anything else) Waterfall Caches with the keyword in the start of their titles

There are three "go to" options: "details", "print" and "log". Each of these will direct you to a different page for a cache on geocaching.com. Also, the search checks to see if a keyword search will only return one result and if so will send you directly to the cache page.

For example, if you were to type in "displaced" into the search box, you would go directly to the cache page for my Displaced New Englander cache.

If you select the "print" option, you'll go directly to the printer friendly version of the page.

The most useful one for me is the "log" option. That will take you right to the page where you can log your find (or not!)

But wait, there's more! What if the search returns more than one result? It would be a shame to not carry your action all the way through, so I added a little cache selection page, as long as you get less than 20 matches back. (I didn't want to deal with paging.)

Meta Words

Prefixing your search with special words can search specific things or take you to certain pages.

"found: boulter" Shows you the list of all caches Boulter has found
"hidden: boulter" Shows you the list of all caches Boulter has hidden
"profile: boulter" or "user: boulter" Takes you to boulter's profile page
"watch: GCXXXX" or "watch: assume nothing" Will put that cache on your watchlist
"unwatch: GCXXXX" or "unwatch: assume nothing" Will remove that cache from your watchlist
"email: boulter" Takes you to a page to send an email to boulter through geocaching.com
"forums:" Takes you to the Geocaching.com forums
"au:" Will search all of Geocaching Australia
"auforums:" Takes you to the Geocaching Australia forums
"nlforums:" Takes you to the Geocaching Netherlands forums
"new:" Shows you new caches in a particular state/province by their numeric geocaching ID.
"help:" or "about:" Takes you to this page

If there are more meta words you would find useful, please suggest them!

Other ways to use Geocaching Quick Search

Alex de Vries (aka Lt. Sniper) has written a Search Plugin for Mozilla Firefox for GQS.

Bookmarklets:
Geocaching Quick Search
Geocaching Quick Log
Geocaching Quick Print

Why do I need the bookmarklet?
It's not required, but it's useful because it makes it really quick and easy to use. Hit the bookmarklet from your links bar and it pops up a dialog box to type in your search and you're there!

Customizing the search form

You can pass parameters to the search form to set the default status of the options. These are the options:

mode = "cache" (default), "printer" (same as mobile), and "log"
decrypt (turns on)
all (turns on)

Example 1: Go to log page
http://boulter.com/gqs/?mode=log

Example 2: Mobile version, show all logs decrypted
http://boulter.com/gqs/?mode=printer&decrypt&all

Geocaching Quick Search

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