Family Historian User Group

I am getting more and more frustrated by the results from Ancestry's search engine

I just searched for a John Weaver, born 1896 Tonbrige, Kent, and the 3rd entry on the list was for a Alice Sophia Avery, born 1895 Bidborough Kent!

As far as I can make out, it matched Avery with Weaver! How useful is that

What did you have the options for name matching set to?

ColeValleyGirl wrote: ↑

06 Mar 2021 11:15

What did you have the options for name matching set to?

Quite broad, but their definition of broad ain't the same as mine

And yet whenever people on "Who do you think you are?" (celebrity family history TV programme) search for their ancestors they always find them instantly on the search screen. I don't understand why you're having these problems?

Nick,
I agree.
Especially as Ancestry’s results page often bears no relation to reality, especially when it comes to place names in Family Trees.

Places in family trees are often Americanised by them before being displayed in the search results page. Why they feel the need to change places in this way is beyond me.

If someone states that an invidual in their tree was born in London, England, why do the results page show they were born in London, Montreal, Canada?

I’ve long since learnt to ignore places names for individuals when all other details seem to match. 9 times out of 10, the tree owner has it correct, but Ancestry has managed to change it

Remember that the research and presentation standard with Member Trees is highly variable. I suspect a major cause is the user just entering a town or city name, and Ancestry fills in the rest using North American defaults.

Mark,
That is not my experience, and not what I was referring to. I’ve seen instances where place has been fully described (town, county, country) yet they still changed it. Personally, I don’t see why they have to change it anyway, even if it is wrong. Ancestry should be showing what is in the tree, not what it thinks should be in the tree.

Isn’t that one of the cardinal rules in transcribing? Transcribe what is written, and do not interpret it into what you think should have been written!
i.e If it says cole minor, don’t change it to coal miner!

It's the reason I use FMP for searches far more often than Ancestry. That, and the fact you can re-order columns of results in FMP, compared to Ancestry's apparently random, fixed presentation.
Anne

Gowermick wrote: ↑

06 Mar 2021 15:34

... I’ve seen instances where place has been fully described (town, county, country) yet they still changed it. Personally, I don’t see why they have to change it anyway ...

There's some sort of standardisation goes on for place names in trees, so that the indexing works. It's needed to cope with the fact that "Cheshire,@England" with 1 space is not the same (textually) as "Cheshire,@@@England" with 3 spaces. Equally, it's sort of possible to enhance place-names by adding a church name (say) to the front but then the question is whether "St. Mary, Nantwich..." should be indexed as "Nantwich...". If not, it won't be found when searching for "Nantwich..."

IIRC, there's a drop-down that appears where you select the version you want, to save typing. I wonder if these problems arise where someone has initially typed "London" (say) and the default matches it to "London, Ontario..." for the index value. Then someone corrects it but never clicks that drop down to set the index, only alters the visible text???

Best guess for what happens with trees.