Starting fairly recently, the API has started returning crazy results for 2 word searches. For example:
https://api.foursquare.com/v2/venues/search?oauth_token=XXX&query=local_edition&radius=35000&ll=37.8%2C-122.4&limit=20&intent=browse
Will only return things matching ‘ion’ it seems. If I search for either ‘local’ or ‘edition’, the intended location is one of the first few results.
Is it time to stop replacing spaces with underscores? For a while, that was the only way to get reasonable results when searching for multiple words. (see this thread for more information: What's the best way to tune my Foursquare API search queries?)
I’m not sure why you’re getting results for “ion”, but if you replace the underscore with a plus sign or
%20, it seems to work fine for me:https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/explore#req=venues/search%3Fquery%3Dlocal+edition%26radius%3D35000%26ll%3D37.8%252C-122.4%26limit%3D20%26intent%3Dbrowse
https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/explore#req=venues/search%3Fquery%3Dlocal%2520edition%26radius%3D35000%26ll%3D37.8%252C-122.4%26limit%3D20%26intent%3Dbrowse