Just to summerize .
If your app is being loaded from external links then angular wont detect this as a URL change so $loaction.search() would give you an empty object . To solve this you need to set following in your app config(app.js)
.config(['$routeProvider', '$locationProvider', function ($routeProvider, $locationProvider)
{
$routeProvider
.when('/', {
templateUrl: 'views/main.html',
controller: 'MainCtrl'
})
.otherwise({
redirectTo: '/'
});
$locationProvider.html5Mode(true);
}]);