I sometime use segment explore to find a popular segment and then pinch a route to follow to get there and maybe stumble of something new. But just had a look and all the off-road segments have gone. So have they all been deleted?
Nope. Still there.
Oh I can not find any round here use segment explore.
The algorithm STRAVA uses to pick which segments to display depends on their popularity, so if there's a road nearby it will likely only display road segments.
It's a bit shit, it would be better if the search box let you input the name of a trail/segment. I.e to find Swinley you need to search for Bracknell and then zoom in, and then to find the corkscrew you have to zoom over its exact location as its not as popular as the yellow brick road.
I don't think its that as I then looked closer to home and the segments that were shown in the past do not show up now even if I zoom in.
The segment explore seems to be a bit rubbish now. Its not showing most of the segments near me. Seems nearly all of the running segments are missing.
Maybe it is based on popularity. But there's not many other Strava users near me, so not many people have done the segments. It would be more useful if it showed some segments in the area, even if they're no very popular.
On further investigation, there are a lot of segments that aren’t showing up. They still exist but seem to be filtered out of the results, even with DH only selected.
I’ve noticed that too, tried looking at a few areas local to me & even the segments I know exist don’t show. It’s not just off road though, lots of road segments don’t appear.
I don't know if this will help but it is a different place to look for segments
https://www.doogal.co.uk/strava.php
the filters might bring you more luck?
Interesting that - I was looking for some segments I know exist but the Strava explore & map wasn't showing them either. Off road and shortish segments....the longest ones still show.
Maybe a temporary glitch ?
I've been seeing this for a week or so now.
Raised a ticket and got this response:
Thanks for reaching out. We are reviewing features that were originally designed for athlete motivation and inspiration to ensure they cannot be compromised by people with bad intent.
Regards,
Strava Support Team
and the ticket was closed as resolved.
This kind of breaks Strava for me as very few segments locally now show up.
This has also happened to me , all trails at my local except the main climb onto the moor and a gravel descend (two most used routes) have disappeared from the segment explorer but all the routes at a nearby forest are still there but it is more sanctioned over there than my local.
but the other day I did a few trails at local and they still appeared on my ride log and I was able to look at the times just not on the explorer which is strange
This kind of breaks Strava for me as very few segments locally now show up.
If you're local, why do you need to "explore" them in strava? Ride routes with segments you like, then ride them again, but faster.
Nothing wrong with viewing off-road segments round my parts 😏
I’ve noticed segment explorer is a bit screwed recently. Was trying to show a friend a segment and it wasn't showing - even when selecting bike and DH segments only. Thought it’d been deleted until I found it on my strava feed. This combined with being unable to create new segments because they are “too short” is killing Strava for me.
This is because of the recent story where someone was logging their runs around a secret military base in Syria to Strava, someone discovered them on the global heatmap and a journalist tracked the user back to their home address. Obviously not great so they restricted the segment browsing.
Same problem here segments that used to show up on moors don't show up. Still shows the more popular off road routes round Ilkley and Otley.
Ross: is that speculation on your behalf, or have Strava confirmed it?
And why would it affect "off road" segments only?
It would make more sense for the military to provide some geo-fence coordinates to Strava and ask them to hide/delete all activities within the perimeter...
I get the same thing. Cant explore for seg's anymore. And making new ones just says its too short.
Find a popular off road segment, click on a few rides that include it to reveal the rest.
All the local cheek and even slightly less popular BW segments have just vanished. Not even appearing on name search. All because the US Military has trouble keeping control of its own personnel.
Not sure what they've changed but around us some off-road segments still get shown despite them being cheeky yet some legitimate ones on BWs are missing. All a bit random. I don't know which mapping they use to determine the legal status of tracks - I'll check OpenStreetMap tonight when I get home as I've been updating/correcting some local info. The filter they use might be wrong and only looking for tracks/roads that are open to all whereas bridleways are marked up differently.
There's a comment somewhere on the Strava site about creating new segments and the technical reasons why there's a lower limit to their length. From playing around it seems like it's around 300 metres. The segment creation tool also checks for similar segments to try and avoid multiple segments over the same bit of track/road.
One thing that has been added recently is the ability to add photos via the web page - previously you could only do it from the app.
Its been like that for a while I think, from before the secret spy base story broke. Is it not simply that there are so many segments their architecture is struggling to cope? Some areas near me you have 4 different segments going up the same hill, then you get people editing their segments when the lose the KOM etc and it just becomes a mess.
I have often thought that eventually whole sections of certain woods / descents would just turn orange.
Some places like trail centres have loads of segments and what with the varying coverage of GPS units its very messy.
I'm not buying the secret base explanation.
Firstly that was the heatmap. The heatmap seems unchanged to me. Woburn still lit up like a Christmas tree on the heat map. More significantly so is Camp Bastion
I can see lots of segments in Woburn but I don't know how the segment explorer use to look so can't make any useful comments about that
Thanks to jonba about https://www.doogal.co.uk/strava.php
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Discovered some local segments I didn't know existed, thanks to Strava's horrid segment explorer functionality.
Segment creators can also make their segments hidden whenever they want which would also trim them out from the Explorer. This has heppended a lot in Swinley over the past couple of years to try and limit heroics and resulting accidents.
Some segments that used to show on segment explorer no longer display for me. Even if I zoom in on an area that I know contains a segment its not showing, when it has previously. Seems like it's the less well used trails that are not showing, exactly the stuff I want to find, I know where the main popular trails are.
Doesn't look like popularity: The climb up Mastiles Lane from Kilnsey (2017 attempts by 1300 people) shows but not the BW that leads from Boss Moor to Malham Moor Lane, the segment is called "down cow" and has 2,149 Attempts By 1,019 People.
no offroad segments showing at all in Aberdeenshire, I wonder what dataset they've used to exclude them and If the openstreetmap was edited to add the rails as road as roads, maybe they would reappear?
hm, it's not that there's none, but they are very few now -- checked local segments in local woods, some are still showing up but it's the very high traffic'ed ones, even ones that have got reasonable coverage - I think - are just not showing..
this is Moray local. I looked at ones in Monaughty. Only can see one, ones in Oakwoods - several.. even using that tool, it's the same ones I think.
bizarrely there are still segments on display within RAF Lossiemouth, so don't think it's directly military-related.
The climb up Mastiles Lane from Kilnsey (2017 attempts by 1300 people) shows but not the BW that leads from Boss Moor to Malham Moor Lane, the segment is called “down cow” and has 2,149 Attempts By 1,019 People.
Mastiles is a public road, though. Might explain some of it.
EDIT: But then again, Down Cow and all the other Boss Moor segments are showing up for me when I zoom in. So it could just be a random/overcrowding thing that favours byway segments when there's too much clutter.
There's a TRO on Mastiles Lane, will have to check OpenStreetMap to see what that marks it as. There's a segment a bit to the south "Boss Moor techy climb" that's shown in segment explore. Just 1,284 Attempts By 707 People but to get to it most will have done the BW from the end of Moor Lane which isn't shown.
Moor Lane itself is shown as a downhill but not the uphill segment.
It's still a byway for mapping purposes.
I reckon that in most cases, if there is a screenful (ie >9) segments, it will prioritise the road ones, then start showing the off-road ones. It may prioritise them on popularity, length, who knows.
Martin - can you see the segment leading from the end of "down cow" to the bottom of Mastiles? It's called "down to tarn" or similar. There's loads of segments in that area that I don't see. It's totally random as to what's shown but it's not actually random as I see the same selection each time if you see what I mean.
"I reckon that in most cases, if there is a screenful (ie >9) segments, it will prioritise the road ones, then start showing the off-road ones. It may prioritise them on popularity, length, who knows."
I can zoom in to an area where I know there re a number of trails. Strava is showing me 2 road segments (overlapping just different lengths), and 3 off road segments (two of which are overlapping), so 5 in total. There are other (less frequented) segments within the viewed area but they are not showing at all.
Edit: I can even put the full segment name into the search and it doesn't show. It certainly used too. The segment still exists in Strava, only way to get to it is via existing rides.