Thursday, July 21, 2011

Some Help for Searching Ancestry.com

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I gave my "Searching Ancestry.com Effectively" presentation last night at GSNOCC in Yorba Linda, California, and noted some of the Ancestry.com information pages and help screens to the attendees.  Many commented afterwards that they did not know about these, and they appear to explain quite a bit about the topics, so I wanted to share them here:

The Customer Help Page has Knowledge Base major topics for Online Family Tree, Family Tree Maker, Record Types and MyCanvas.

What is the best way to search the databases on Ancestry?

Tips for Searching on Ancestry.com - http://search.ancestry.com/LandingPages/SearchTips.aspx

How are Exact Searches and Ranked Searches different, and when might I use one over the other?

*  “First Name Filters” in “New Search” http://search.ancestry.com/Search/Help/SearchForm.aspx?topic=fname

*  “Last Name Filters” in “New Search” http://search.ancestry.com/Search/Help/SearchForm.aspx?topic=lname

Locality Filter” in “New Search” - http://search.ancestry.com/Search/Help/SearchForm.aspx?topic=places

Wild Card Rules: http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2010/01/04/ancestry-search-improved-wildcard-flexibility/

There are many more pages in the Customer Help section, and through links on many of the search pages.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thank you SO much for this list, Randy. It beats the impossible magic I requested yesterday.
Since most of us can't get to other societies, maybe we should all learn to do for our out-of-area colleagues what you have just done for all of us today.
Sue MCormick