* Good News and Bad News On Ancestry Member Tree Searches (12 November 2018)
* How Accurate Is an Ancestry Quick and Dirty Tree? (5 November 2018)
* The Power of an Ancestry.com Search From the Member Tree (10 October 2018)
* Ancestry Search Quirk - "County and Adjacent Counties" Filter Doesn't Work (2 October 2018)
* Has Ancestry.com Indexed the Ancestry Member Trees Yet? (15 August 2018)
* Ancestry.com Says They Will Work on Technical Problems (11 May 2018)
* Reader Comments on Ancestry Search Problems (1 May 2018)
* Are There Search Problems on Ancestry.com? - UPDATED (25 April 2018)
* Ancestry Member Trees, Indexing Rules, Cousin Bait, Source Citations and Me (18 December 2018)
And more earlier.
I, and my readers have identified significant problems with the Ancestry search engine, presentation of results, indexing of Ancestry Member Trees, and other problems. Ancestry.com users have been patient with Ancestry's efforts to fix the problems, but patience has a limit for many of us.
For instance, on 11 May 2018, Ancestry actually responded on the secret Ancestry.com Facebook group promising to fix the problems by the end of May 2018. Unfortunately, the problems persist. I face them every day as I research my ancestry.
A) The problems and issues that I would like to see fixed by Ancestry.com include:
1) Ancestry Member Trees are not Indexed on a regular basis (daily, weekly, monthly at a minimum). The trees were indexed in October 2017, and again in October 2018.
2) Indexing the Ancestry Member Tree profiles apparently depends on them having at least one "Ancestry Source." Those are records attached to a tree profile. Only the profiles with an Ancestry Source are indexed. My tree of over 52,000 profiles has over 100,000 source citations, but only about 20 profiles have an "Ancestry Source." Almost all of my source citations are to the Evidence Explained standard, and are called "Other Sources" by Ancestry, as if they are inferior to "Ancestry Sources."
My recommendation is that ALL profiles in Ancestry Member Trees be indexed so that other researchers can be helped by profiles with "Ancestry Sources," "Other Sources," and even No Sources.
For example, my grandfather's profile above will not be indexed by Ancestry with the current rules, even though I have over 50 source citations on this profile.
3) Searching for records for a person in Ancestry record collections results in inconsistent results. The "Records" search works very well, with many search parameters that can be searched using broad or narrow search techniques. When I switch to the "Categories" list, the list of record collections with results appears with numbers of results. When I click on one of the record collections with a number of results (e.g., N), the results list for that collection often shows me 0 (zero) results. Wait - it said there were N! Where are they? If I start a new search for the specific record collection, the N results usually appear. There should be no inconsistencies here - something is wrong - if the Category list says there are N results, then clicking on that collection should provide N collections.
4) There has been a noticeable lack of Added (new!) record collections since October 2018, and very few collections have been updated. The "Recently Added and Updated" page on Ancestry lists "Coming Soon" collections; until last week, some said "late 2018;" those now say "Early 2019." The last new record collection on the Card Catalog today was added on 6 November 2018. The last Updated collection on the Card Catalog today says 12 December 2018. Why has the production of new and updated collections stopped? When will they be started again?
5) When I click on "View People with Hints"for my Ancestry Member Tree, I can see that there are thousands of "Records" Hints. However, almost every time I click on the link to see the first Hints, I get a message "We're experiencing technical difficulties. Please refresh this page to try again." Sometimes, refreshing works, but I often have to click on the "Photos" link and then the "Records" link to see the list of Records.
6) Apparently, Ancestry.com has a "Big Tree" that is used for the "We're Related" mobile app, the "Possible Ancestor" feature in Member Trees, "Life Story Overview" in DNA Circles. and for search results in Google for persons in Ancestry Member Trees. The problem is that some of the relationships are wrong because they come from some sort of coagulation of Ancestry Member Trees.
For instance, the "Life Story Overview" for my 3rd great-grandfather William Knapp (1775-1856) collects info from 56 trees, and summarizes is life as:
"When William Knapp was born in 1775 in Dutchess, New York, his father, Shubael, was 18 and his mother, Rebecca, was 8. He married Sarah Cutter in 1804 in Woodbridge, New Jersey. They had 19 children in 39 years. He died on June 16, 1856, in Newton, New Jersey, having lived a long life of 81 years, and was buried there."
Nope...we don't know his parents names, his mother was age 8 when she had him, and they had only 11 children. This is what happens when some person or algorithm makes decisions based on too much poor data. My tree probably wasn't considered because it doesn't have "Ancestry Sources."
7) So there is a BIG Tree. Where did it come from? Is it a descendant of the "One World Tree" or the "Ancestry World Tree" databases from ten years ago? Can it be modified based on some sort of curator, peer review or knowledgeable panel? Is information being added to it all the time? If so, by who? Will Ancestry automatically be using it for finding the common ancestors for DNA Matches?
8) Every informed AncestryDNA user I know (and I know many of them) wishes that AncestryDNA would provide a Chromosome Browser. A chromosome browser would enable a user to determine the chromosomes and segments of chromosomes that they match on a specific DNA Match. A good Chromosome Browser would enable the user to download ALL of their chromosome segments for a group (or all) of their DNA matches, and be able to use a spreadsheet to order the matches to see which other users have the same large segment(s) and therefore are related to each other.
I know that AncestryDNA competitors 23andMe, FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage each have a chromosome browser that makes this happen in seconds with a full download of all segments to a file that can be opened in a spreadsheet. AncestryDNA has the most users, but they have the most primitive relationship finder. A chromosome browser, a download of a set of segments, an online clustering of matches, and suggested common ancestors from a BIG and accurate Tree would result in a competitive advantage for AncestryDNA. It's really just database management, right?
B) Eight is enough! I hope that Ancestry.com will have meetings with users at the RootsTech 2019 conference from February 27 to March 2 in Salt Lake City. I hope that they address all of the issues and problems raised here.
C) However, my readers may have suggestions for other Ancestry.com and AncestryDNA issues and problems - and I invite them to make a comment to their issues and problems on this blog post, or in their own blog or Facebook posts.
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Disclosure: I have had a paid subscription to Ancestry.com since 2000, and use the site every day. I have received material considerations from Ancestry.com in years past, but that does not affect my objectivity in writing about their products and services.
Copyright (c) 2019, Randall J. Seaver
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