* Ancestry search hints

[Gowermick]

Whist doing a general search for an indivuidual on Ancestry, I saw some of the results were from my own tree BUT the place Ancestry has associated with the hint, is NOT the same as the place shown in my tree! This may also apply to shaking leaf hints too, but I haven’t checked this yet

It would seem that Ancestry replaces what’s in the tree, with its own interpretation, usually somewhere in the US.

So whereas I had John Smith, born 1880, Stepney, Middlesex, England in my tree, the result list showed John Smith born 1880, Stepney, Middlesex, Maine, USA ( not a true example, but you get my drift)

My advice is not to discard these hints out of hand, simply because they’re from the US, but take a few seconds to look a little closer, especially if they’re from someone’s tree! Why Ancestry should replace placenames in the GEDCOM with its own version I have no idea.

[mjashby]

I believe the reason for this behaviour is simply the USA Centric nature of Ancestry's place matching/mapping, especially when no country name has been specified by whoever input the place details. I have tested this in Family Tree Maker in the past and the 'preference' for USA locations is identical. Particularly irritating if you attempt to use the automatic mapping features rather than inputting geo data manually! There also seems to be a particular problem with Ancestry being unable to recognise that Middlesex is a County in England, London is (historically) a place in Middlesex, as is Westminster; and, of course, that England, Wales and Scotland are actually Countries not States, but that the United Kingdom isn't a Country at all!

Mervyn

[gwilym'smum]

Dim question but what are "shaking leaf hints" on Ancestry please?
Ann

[Gowermick]

Ann,
When you have a tree on Ancestry or one linked to Ancestry from Family Tree Maker, Ancestry signals a potential match to another tree or one of their record sets by a leaf symbol, which actually shakes in FTM.

Mervyn,
Yes, Ancestry is US centric, but the place names in my tree include the Country, so they really have no excuse!

[tatewise]

Ancestry are a law unto themselves, and we just have to work with their rules.
They don't need to have any excuses, because they have too large a market share!
If you don't like it, you can either complain to them, or avoid using them.
They seem to treat England, Scotland, Wales & N.Ireland as states, so I think you must use UK as the country.

[Gowermick]

Mike,
They may be bigger than most, but genealogy is about accuracy. What does it tell genealogists if even Ancestry can’t be bothered.
They really have no excuse, because if you start entering Stepney, Middlesex, England as a placename in one of their search boxes, Ancestry accurately auto-completes it, so they are aware it exists, why change it just because the same place comes from my tree!

The real point I am trying to make, is that they changed the accurate place data in my tree, to something, that, to me, is wholely innaccurate. They should not be changing anything in my tree, they should be reporting what is there, not what they think should be there! Next they’ll be changing my Names, because it doesn’t fit some arcane rule of theirs!

[gwilym'smum]

Thanks for the explanation. I got the wrong end of the stick and thought a "shaking" leaf was something else as well as the hint leaf. Thanks Ann

[victor]

I wouldn't worry too much about this. What is far more important is that your tree is on FH
I have my tree on Ancestry but only use it there for the leaf to connect with other information that is available on Ancestry.
I never copy any tree from Ancestry to FH. What is on FH is the true accurate tree which each of us have put on.
If I find information on other peoples tree on Ancestry I copy it name by name and at the same time checking the accuracy of the information

[Gowermick]

Victr,
I’m not in the least worried that my data will get corrupted, but just annoyed that I and others may be missing out on some possibly useful family connections, just because Ancestry has played around with other peoples data.

[AdrianBruce]

... My advice is not to discard these hints out of hand, simply because they’re from the US, but take a few seconds to look a little closer, especially if they’re from someone’s tree! Why Ancestry should replace placenames in the GEDCOM with its own version I have no idea.

I tried to find similar examples from my tree, because I have more people from London, Ontario than London, En-ger-land. I couldn't actually find any issues but I wasn't sure if I was doing the same sort of search.

If they were from someone else's tree (even if "your lot") you can't be certain how they entered the data and certainly with hints, if I try to follow through, from tree to tree to tree, to discover the ultimate source, it will say "Fred Bloggs from Your Tree" at the top, when it's not from my tree at all, it's simply from the tree that I'm currently enquiring on.

[Gowermick]

Adrian,
I know what you mean, but in the list of matches, it clearly stated which tree the matches came from, and the match I looked at was from my own tree. When I double checked the details in my tree, it clearly showed he was born in England, not US as stated in the match list.

[AdrianBruce]

OK Mike - I think I understand a bit more what you were doing. I just tried to search Family Trees in Ancestry using menu Search / Public Member Trees, looking for the name "Selina Pleass". What I got looked like this (it's my tree, by the way):

Capture.JPG (19.35 KiB) Viewed 10514 times

Looks fairly sensible to me but when I looked closer, I found that it's not exactly what's in my tree either, as this is her entry:

Capture2.JPG (13.95 KiB) Viewed 10514 times

So they've done some processing on her, to truncate the place name from 3 nodes to just 2. So, if this is anything like your scenario, it might be that processing (which is just a truncation in my case) that's gone wrong. Of course, I might have lots like this but I've never looked at my own entries!

[mezentia]

I've found ancestry hints quite useful, sometimes highlighting sources I either hadn't known about or had previously not bothered to look at. On the other hand, they do offer some outrageous hints too, for example hints for someone for before they were born or after they had died! I don't think we should ignore them out of hand, but we do need to check each one carefully. "Ignore" those that are clearly not relevent, "Maybe" those that need further research, and "Accept" those that are clearly relevent. However, before accepting the hint into your ancestry tree, check each and every field carefully and edit where necessary. I always make sure that place names are as accurate as I can, usually town, county, country. Ancestry's autocomplete will come up with nonsense if you are not careful, so I usually choose to type it all in manually.

[Gowermick]

Mezentia,
I’m fortunate in that I never add anything to my on-line tree via Ancestry, so I always ignore hints I might do the occasional delete, but that is as far as it goes. All other updates are done manually via my PC, and only occasionally will I update my tree by reloading it.

[jmurphy]

Late to the party, but Ancestry does have a 'place authority' of known (to it) places, which can sometimes be wrong. If you find something woefully wrong, report it and (one hopes) it can be fixed.

This is one of my peeves -- that websites will use a place authority and not say what the underlying standard is. For instance, FamilySearch uses Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-lexikon des deutschen Reichs for Germany. For England, unless it's something like the historical maps which (I think) are based on Phillimore's Atlas, they probably use Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales. But there's no statement on the site that says so; you have to find out by talking to a consultant at the FHL.

Similarly Ancestry doesn't say what they based their database on. It's maddening.