tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26204193.post1562648980939567647..comments2024-03-19T01:26:04.572-07:00Comments on Genea-Musings: Navigating Old and New Search on Ancestry.com - Post 1: New Search, Advanced FormRandy Seaverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17477703429102065294noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26204193.post-58411912870851050662011-05-27T17:16:52.747-07:002011-05-27T17:16:52.747-07:00One of the major disadvantages of "New Search...One of the major disadvantages of "New Search" mode on Ancestry.com is that one cannot go to simple scrollable lists of major databae groups (say, Military Records) as one can in Old Search.<br /><br />Accompanying this drawback is that access to the Card Catalog is disfunctional, and some of the Collection pages are downright deceptive about what the search box on the page will search (see Revolutionary War collection, where of the featured items listed at upper right, some aren't searchable at all, and some will not be searched by the search box's normal name fields.<br /><br />In these respects, Ancestry.com's New Search is like mushroom management.Geoloverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12050268303916428230noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26204193.post-2069479219514105462011-05-27T17:12:39.145-07:002011-05-27T17:12:39.145-07:00Hi Randy & all Genea-Musings readers.
Thanks ...Hi Randy & all Genea-Musings readers.<br /><br />Thanks for posting on Ancestry.com Search - It's great to see discussion on Search within the community, and gives us here at Ancestry.com a great opportunity to get some feedback on how well things are working.<br /><br />As I was reading your blog, I realise that you have uncovered an "unexpected behaviour" in relevance vs category sort, and I thought it might be useful to clear up what's happening.<br /><br />The difference between the two numbers is primarily because we exclude family trees from the "global" search. This is because we know most users want to get straight to historical records whereever possible, and trees, becuase of the depth of detail in them, tend to rise to the top of ranked search results. You can still see all trees in the relevance view by selecting just "view family trees" from the advanced search form, and excluding all other categories.<br /><br />The way to check this is to run the search, look at the category view, and check how many family trees there are. This will usually be the difference between the two views.<br /><br />I'd agree this is not the most elegant solution, and in time, we will be looking to improve the way this works.<br /><br />Now, there is still one remaining mystery. As you describe in the post, Isaac Seaver generates 470 matches on Category view, of which trees are 84. However it generates 385 in relevance view, a difference of 85. <br /><br />I have asked the team to look into what is happening here in that there appears to be an unexplained difference of 1... I'll let you know when we track it down<br /><br />regards<br /><br />Tony Macklin<br />Head of Search, Ancestry.comTony Macklinhttp://www.ancestry.comnoreply@blogger.com