Friday, May 9, 2008

Where is Ancestry World Tree in the new Ancestry Search?

While comparing the "old Ancestry Search" and "new Ancestry Search" results and presentation, I noticed that there was at least one major difference.

On the old Ancestry search screen, I chose the "Family Trees" tab and entered a check in "Exact Search" and "Seaver" in the "Last Name" box. Here's the result:




As you can see, it found entries in Public Member Trees (3,799), Personal Member Trees (3,544), One World Tree (2,007) and Ancestry World Tree (11,646).

In the "new Ancestry Search," I checked "Exact matches" and put "Seaver" in the "Last Name" box. The Family Trees section is way down the results list, and I clicked on the link to See All Family Tree results. Here's what I see:



In this list are Public Member Trees (12,109), Personal Member Trees (8,662), and One World Tree (6,925), plus several others (which were in the Vital Records section previously, I believe).

However, Ancestry World Tree is not included in the "new Ancestry Search" list. I wonder why? Is it because it is associated with Rootsweb and is now accessible only through Rootsweb (well, http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/)?

My other mystery is why there are more matches in "new Ancestry Search" than in "old Ancestry Search" for the Public, Personal and One World Trees? I get a different results list when I click on the two different search results. Hmmm, I wonder why?

The "old Ancestry" gave me only 3 matches (from 3 different databases) when I request "Isaac" in the "First Name" box and "Seaver" in the "Last Name" box - all for persons named "Isaac Seaver."

In the "new Ancestry," when I input "Isaac" in the "First Name" box and "Seaver" in the "Last Name" box it found 117 matches - including spouses, children and parents named Isaac. It did find 8 "Isaac Seaver" items from 8 different databases, but it found 109 records where there was no "Isaac Seaver" as the subject of the record. When I ask for a search for "Isaac" "Seaver," I expect to receive results for "Isaac Seaver."

So that seems to explain the differences in the two Search results!

I'm pretty sure that I don't like finding more people not named "Isaac Seaver" when I really want to find an "Isaac Seaver." The searches are hard enough without this help from the new Ancestry Search finding people I don't want to find.

Sometimes change is not always progress! Off my soapbox (and I don't mean to offend the Ancestry programmers - it's a hard job, I know, but I shared some of my concerns back in February and March).

1 comment:

Terry Thornton said...

RANDY, I'm a new subscriber to Ancestry.com --- I paid for a deluxe membership ($155) last month and I have already canceled it so that it will not renew automatically in 2009.

I have two major issues with Ancestry: one of which you addressed. I can't imagine why the search feature when specified "exact" and given and surname and DOB and state and DOD and state provided, that I sometimes get hundreds of "hits" some of whom are not even remotely in the ball park.

The second issue, and the reason I wrote them a cancellation notice and ugly note was that they threw me off the other evening saying I had exceeded my membership limit or some such garbage. For $155 I think I should have unlimited access to their site to sort through all the extra hits they give me when I'm looking for a specific name, date, place, etc.

No, I will not renew my membership with Ancestry.com --- and I'm sorry that I wasted $155 for such limited help.

Thanks for letting me vent on your space.

Terry Thornton
Fulton, Mississippi