Comments on: Ancestry Search: Place Filters on New Advanced Search

By: Toni

Toni — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 23:21:57 +0000

I always use the “old search” http://www.phonenumberlocator.org

By: Pat Johnson

Pat Johnson — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:11:28 +0000

I have taken your “tour” and think it is a mess…more decisions and missing census that used to be simple to find. Put it back to basic and let the people’s voice be heard!! I have belonged to Ancestry since 1994 and I am seriously considering dropping my subscription. Too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

By: Randy Crain

Randy Crain — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:47:19 +0000

I always use the “old search” Never could use to the new one.

By: Tarrant County Tx Public Records

Tarrant County Tx Public Records — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:05:11 +0000

[...] compares public employee salaries for texas cities … Tarrant county college | hot top trends Ancestry search: place filters on new advanced search Tarrant county public records – can i access them free? County texas land | arizona on sale [...]

By: Tarrant County Texas Public Records

Tarrant County Texas Public Records — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 03:50:21 +0000

[...] college | hot top trends Dfwsalaries.com compares public employee salaries for texas cities … Ancestry search: place filters on new advanced search Detective agency london – obtaining tarrant county divorce records Tarrant county public records [...]

By: Tony Cousins

Tony Cousins — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:35:27 +0000

Thanks Sarah #9 – you’d think that Ancestry could provide that information in the description, they did a great job on the 1851 UK census, listing areas where the images were lost through flooding.

TonyC

By: Jerry Bryan

Jerry Bryan — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 13:52:05 +0000

Re: Beth Proctor #12. You probably know this already, but you can still use Old Search. The ability to select Old Search vs New Search is not available from the ancestry.com Home page, but it is available from the main ancestry.com Search page and from most of the other Search pages. Once you select Old Search, ancestry.com remembers the option for your account (it is a “sticky” option), and you shouldn’t have to specify it again.

As one of the most severe critics of New Search when it was first released, I would urge you to give it a second look. ancestry.com has made many, many improvements to New Search since it was first released. The most recent round of improvements includes improved filters for both places and names. Indeed,this very thread is about the improvements in the place filters. There are still several areas where Old Search produces a better searching experience than New Search, but the recently released features in New Search are great and they are not available in Old Search at all.

I assume from your comments that you are an experienced researcher. To that end, I would strongly recommend that if you are using New Search that you turn on the Advanced option and look at some of the new features that are available for filtering places and names. (Actually, I recommend that *everybody*, including the newest newbie, turn on Advanced. The so-called “Advanced” features are not rocket science and they are very intuitive.)

I would also recommend that you make note of the fact that there are two options available in New Search for displaying search results from a global search. One is called Summarized by Category and the other is called Sorted by Relevance. I personally use Summarized by Category about 100% of the time, but Sorted by Relevance is the default. If you like Old Search, you might try switching to Summarized by Category. That would probably give you a search experience much more like you are accustomed to seeing with Old Search. Summarized by Category is a sticky option that you only have to specify once if you never want to change it. You do have to specify Summarized by Category after your first search with New Search because it only appears on the results page. There is no way to specify it at the beginning of the search.

Happy searching,
Jerry Bryan

By: Beth Proctor

Beth Proctor — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:07:45 +0000

For years I have used Ancestry with great results, I have tried the new search and absolutly do not like it. I feel like with the subscription fees I pay, I should be able to easily search like always and should have the option to search using the old method
I agree: What a mess – Give us the option to go back!

By: Jade

Jade — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:58:37 +0000

Janet, #7 — On the NewSearch page for the US Census generally and for selected enumerations (I did not check all), I had no trouble adding a second location after selecting one County ~and adjacent counties~.

I could not select “adjacent counties” for the second location. Is this what your problem is?

If you are unable to select a second “lived in” site for a particular enumeration, giving what your search specifics were (and if you still have this problem) would be helpful for trouble-shooting.

By: Jade

Jade — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:48:16 +0000

Keith #6, you do have the option to select one County only in the “lived in” field. The options in the drop-down list are:

Use default settings
Restrict to this place exactly
Or restrict to just:
county
county/adjacent counties
state
state/adjacent states
country

I tried your search for 1870 US Federal Census, Schuylkill County, USA (exact place only) and got no results by the spelling “Elias Mayer” but with wild card (searching for M*er) there were two results indexed as “Moyer” as well as Millers, etc., all in Schuylkill County.