* Ancestry indexing issue.

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themoudie
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Ancestry indexing issue.

Post by themoudie »

On a family history society forum of which I am a member, the following problem has been highlighted by a member in the Ancestry data. Other subscription data sites also have similar problems.
.... searching in Ancestry once again for the national marriage records of two people in my family tree, records which I knew existed through my subscription to FindMyPast. As I couldn't find either person by searching on their names, I decided to search through the register manually by accessing the set from the Card Catalogue and then using the drop down menus to get the year, the quarter and then the first letters of their surnames. However, upon tracking down the relevant index pages, I discovered none of the names on those pages had been indexed. Indeed when I investigated further, I discovered many of the other pages in that set of records either had very few names indexed or worse, no names at all, and I only looked at two letters of the alphabet. If you realise that there may be around 300 names per page and many, many pages are affected, this could mean tens of thousands of names have not been indexed!

I therefore reported this to Ancestry on Saturday, and after asking for more details, they have confirmed today that there is indeed a problem generally which they have now escalated to their web content team.

For those wondering which records I'm referring to, they are:

"England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837 - 1915, Year 1887, Q2-Apr-May-Jun"

The letters I was searching through were C, (22 filmstrips) and F, (10 filmstrips), but I suspect many of the other letters in this quarter's set are probably affected too.
These are not my findings as I only use Ancestry as a 'Guest' or at my local library, when open, and I can forward my research finding directly to my email.

The UK 'FreeBMD' data combined with the General Register Office - Online Indexes, serves me very well for UK research.

My regards, Bill
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