Monday, September 8, 2014

What Happened to the "Suggested Records" on Ancestry.com?

I was searching away in the census records on Ancestry.com today, and realized that I wasn't seeing any "Suggested Records" on the right-hand side of the search screen of a Record Summary.

For example, here is Isaac Seaver's Record Summary for the 1900 U.S. Census taken today:


There are no "Suggested Records" on the right-hand side of the screen above.  There used to be...last week?  For months before that!

I knew that "Suggested Records" were also called "Related Content" on the record image page - here is the screen shot for the 1900 Census record for Isaac Seaver:


 Nope.  Nada.  I wonder why?  did they disappear these "Suggested Records" because they had complaints about them?  Or they weren't accurate enough?  Or is it just my account?  Or has Ancestry.com changed something recently intentionally (or by mistake)?

I checked other census years - 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 - with no "Suggested Records" showing up.  None showed up on Isaac Seaver's vital records.  Or on the census and other records of ten other ancestors.

For reference purposes, here is a screen shot of the 1900 U.S. Census Record Summary for Isaac Seaver taken 9 March 2014:


As you can see, the "Suggested Records" column is full of suggested records for this person.

I loved the "Suggested Records" because they really short-circuited my research.  I didn't have to go back to a general search to find a record in another database.  While they weren't perfect, they were very useful to me, especially for finding non-census records for persons.

I went into my Ancestry Member Tree, and the Hints were still there, including the other census records, the vital records, etc. that are on the list of Suggested Records on the screen above.

If I have a vote, I want the "Suggested Records" back ASAP!!

I hope that Ancestry.com will tell us what happened here, and why they were removed.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2014/09/what-happened-to-suggested-records-on.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver


8 comments:

Cousin Russ said...

Randy,

Very interesting.

I didn't find any blog post about this, but I remember somewhere, that there were some changes being made, but I thought it was in and Online Member Tree. I'll try to find what I am remembering.

I was able to exactly duplicate your findings on "Isaac Seaver". No Suggested Records on the Right. That column as blank or there wasn't a column there.

The one think I thought about was How I did the search. I only used Isaac and Seaver in the Search field ONLY looking in the 1900 Federal Census.

Bottom line, same results. Wondering WHY>

Thank you,

Russ

Linda Stufflebean said...

I noticed over the weekend that the Suggested Records column wasn't appearing.

Geolover said...

I was seeing them yesterday, and they are not gone today. See

http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=PASeptennialCensus&h=518436&ti=0&indiv=try&gss=pt&ssrc=pt_t12227392_p-308631867_kpidz0q3d-308631867z0q26pgz0q3d32768z0q26pgplz0q3dpid


It could be they are being removed piecemeal, though.

Unknown said...

I noticed this too, recently. Ancestry has gone backward. People you know are there, leaving it at surname & county, and exact, and the family will not turn up.

Interesting that the more Ancestry touts itself as so easy for anyone to find everything about a family they could possibly want, it is harder and harder to find anyone in the census or other records.

They are losing long-time users over these bad decisions they have made.

Unknown said...

I just checked this and can see the Suggested Records column on my Tree. I like that Ancestry has started to list records you have already added to your tree following a Search. However, they still include those records in the Suggested Records which can lead to duplication if you don't check the "included" list first.

Ginger Smith said...

Hi Randy, you are not alone. I noticed this as well! I also noticed that my bill has gone up $40 this year!

Beth Benko said...

I noticed that Suggested Records were missing -- last night during a live presentation to a local genealogical society! Fortunately, I had a screen shot on my slides that I could display. How distressing to think that Suggested Records have disappeared permanently.

MHD said...

I was thinking it was just me and that I'd missed some announcement about "suggested records" being eliminated or moved or something. I miss them lots.