My "test" since then has been to see if my "new" Ancestry Member Tree, added in November 2017, has been indexed. I added a number of Ancestry sources to several profiles in that tree, and the one I watch for is my second great-grandfather, Isaac Seaver (1823-1901). Here is his profile in my tree:
Note that the profile has "Ancestry Sources" which is, apparently, the criterion for whether a profile appears in a search for Ancestry Member Trees. There are several "Ancestry Sources."
When I do a search for Isaac Seaver, born 1823, in Massachusetts, USA (all exact), I still get 17 results. None of them are for Isaac in my "new" Ancestry Member Tree.
Trust me, my "new" tree isn't on that list of matches. So the wait for new tree indexing is at least 300 days, if not more.
2) On 11 May 2018, Crista Cowan posted information on Facebook about the problems with the search engine - I blogged about it in Ancestry.com Says They Will Work on Technical Problems. In that message, the VP said they hoped to have all of the search engine problems fixed by May 31 (I assumed 2018, didn't you?). The message blamed infrastructures issues which some people thought included the switch to Amazon Web Servers for the data.
Well, it's 76 days after 31 May 2018, and the search problems are still with me (how about you?). Trust me, I just tried to find the Isaac Seaver mentions in the trees, and it showed me 3 matches before it showed me 17 matches.
3) Another message from Ancestry.com management would be helpful, and I hope it includes a commitment to indexing the Ancestry Member Trees.
Of course, not every Ancestry user knows that these problems are still occurring months after they were pointed out to Ancestry.com.
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Disclosure: I have always had a fully paid Ancestry.com subscription since 2000. Ancestry.com has provided material considerations for travel expenses to meetings, and has hosted events and meals that I have attended in Salt Lake City, in past years.
Copyright (c) 2018, Randall J. Seaver
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5 comments:
Completely agree plus Ancestry.com performance has been slow and awful. A bit better recently, but after adding any record to a person, it virtually always goes to the dreaded dead end page:
We’re sorry. The page you tried to access is no longer available.
What can we help you find?
It has also mostly stopped allowing the use of the Command key to open another browser window to inspect a new record without loosing your place in the previous (e.g. Hints) window.
And almost no word from Ancestry on defining what they see as the issues, the actions being taken, etc. This is the complete opposite approach from what Software MacKiev did during the long FTM update - on that you got almost frequent updates from the CEO until all issues were resolved.
I'm still seeing those problems, Randy. I see them so often that my fingers almost automatically reach for the browser's back-button to return to a previous screen to try again. And again. Uploading an image to a person's gallery is a multi-attempt business, too. Reload, reload, reload until you finally get the box to "receive" the image.
Given the importance of an up-to-date member tree index for customers who want to look for DNA cousins, I'm surprised that Ancestry is dragging its feet on maintaining that asset. Are they listening? Bucks! Dollars!
A reputation for NOT following through on promises can be an asset-destroyer.
Randy, THANK YOU for posting about this issue (again). Even though my tree still isn't indexed, I have found that when I search 'All Collections' for the same individual, my tree shows in the list of results. I blogged about this in late July.
Indexing Mystery
I'd be interested to see if you observe the same results.
Randy -- Has your tree been indexed? Mine has! However, when I do a search of public member trees, I don't think the search mechanism is working correctly. This may be the same issue you covered in another blog about searching records.
I posted about this at
Finally Indexed! But ?
I think it has. The last few times I checked (mid-October?) my test guy Isaac Seaver is showing up as indexed, but it doesn't show up "every time" I search. I've looked for several others with "Ancestry sources" and they show up. But none with only "Other Sources" do.
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