Comments on: Ancestry Search: Improved Wildcard flexibility

By: claire

claire — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:36:41 +0000

Yeah on the new feature…and a request. If possible the feature I would love added is the option to sort the search results by the column headings.

Often I get hundreds of results. If I use too many filters I sometimes lose the very result I am looking for. The option to sort all the results by birth date, place, or surname would be a fantastic time saver!!! That way I could sort the information by the column I am most certain of. That way I can reduced the number I need to look through and, at the same time, keep in all the results that may have errors…misspelling wrong years, etc.

By: Ron Lankshear

Ron Lankshear — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:14:44 +0000

I am searching with
?ob*ns
for Robins or Robbins which sometimes also end ens or ans
and may start with D or other letters

?ob*ns seems to be in the terms of the new wildcard function

But for a week or so whilst I get results
There is also a message with red/pink background

“Due to current technical difficulties, only partial search results are shown above. Please try your search again later to see full results.”

I thought temporary but seems to be permanent now and appears when I try “complex” wildcard searches

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:32:01 +0000

This is great news and I am excited about being able to embark on many new searches!

By: Nan Harvey

Nan Harvey — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:03:50 +0000

This is absolutely wonderful. Maybe I can find my Bromagem (Brumigen, etc.) ancestors more easily.

By: Jackie Krear

Jackie Krear — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:09:03 +0000

Keep working to get even MORE (like two letters and a wildcard)… and wildcards on BOTH ENDS (cause searches on the INTERIOR of words is NOT new science).

But thanks for small improvements of any kind.

By: Ancestry.com Blog - » Ancestry Search: Controlling your results with filters

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:13:52 +0000

[...] that 2010 is going to be an exciting year for Search at ancestry.com. As you know, we launched expanded wild card functionality at the beginning of this year. But that was only the start of things to [...]

By: Polly Rubery

Polly Rubery — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:29:28 +0000

Thank you for this great improvement – I’ve already found quite a few “missing people” using it.

However there is one place where it doesn’t work and where it would be a great help if it did. And that is in the English & Welsh GRO birth and death indexes from 1916-2005 (which are great BTW!).

This is because for the period 1916 to 1966 no full second names are recorded, but afterwards they are listed in full.

So it would be great to be able to search the whole database by using “Adam A*” but this is not allowed.

Thus to get all the results, both “Adam A” and “Adam Afullname” you have to search just for Adam, which (with more common names than my example) greatly increases the number of results one has to wade through.

By: Gen Jonely

Gen Jonely — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:25:29 +0000

Helpful clarification of search options.

By: Virginia

Virginia — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:34:13 +0000

Thanks for the improved wildcard search.

Recently, everytime I use Edit on my search, it comes back with Exact checked for all entries. It’s tiresome to keep changing this back to what I had for the previous search.

By: Laura

Laura — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:38:30 +0000

YAY! I was finally able to test out some names using this new capability. The Brunschwilers in my husband’s family NEVER have their name correctly on census records (not necessarily Ancestry’s fault, since the writers of the census just wrote whatever they wanted, one time it was Bruni). But I needed the 1920 census and could never find it. Anyway, I typed Br*ler and sure enough, the VERY FIRST ONE is the one I want (Bruschoviler). THANK YOU! Off to test the next name!