Comments on: Updated new search homepage, place pages, recent searches & recently viewed collections

By: BEE

BEE — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:54:58 +0000

I second that!

By: Deloris

Deloris — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:42:29 +0000

As I’ve said for years now, I’m sticking with Old Search until I see NO COMPLAINTS on this blog. As much as I love Ancestry, it is their records that I’m interested in, and trying out all of these silly improvements only makes things more difficult. At least in Old Search, you do your Search, and you get Results that you can actually look at, without going through all the bells and whistles you guys keep adding. So, don’t ever get rid of Old Search, let us choose what we want to use.

By: Jade

Jade — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:51:25 +0000

Laura, your #138 (no number)–

Woohoo — so glad to hear it!

By: Laura Dansbury

Laura Dansbury — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:12:41 +0000

All,

Thanks for your comments and feedback. I understand that many of you value and are still using old search. The link to old search remains available at the top right of the search homepage located at http://search.ancestry.com/search/.

For this update, we did not change the search forms in new or old search. We did not change the logic or the display of search results in new or old search. Exact works the same as it did before this release.

#120 Jade: We are working on adding the ability to restrict searches to records about a location.

For everyone who gave me feedback on the new look of the search homepage, navigation to category pages, recent searches & viewed collections, and the place pages, I appreciate it.

Laura

By: Pam Spooner

Pam Spooner — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:08:50 +0000

You have rendered this site virtually useless with regard to the search function! So much garbage appears that the search results are unuseable. We need to be able to better filter the results (as in the “old search”). By entering a name, birth year & birth location, I get literally thousands of hits in almost every category! HELP!!!!

By: BEE

BEE — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:42:15 +0000

Peggy, “OLD SEARCH” is still there in the upper right hand corner. If you are in “new search”, it says “old search”, and vice-versa.
This morning, I was searching for a 1920 census for someone who was 12 years old at the time. When I went to “search historical records”, I happened to be in “new search”, so of course, after typing just a few letters of her name it brought up all of her information, including her married name, so the first document that came up with 4-1/2 stars, was for someone with her married name as her maiden name, which obviously, wasn’t the 12yr old girl I was looking for! Her name was Bertha M- this girl’s name was Katherine M – Bertha’s father’s name was John, Katherine’s father’s name was Charles J. Both girls were born in the same state, but two years apart.
I switched over to “old search” and typed in Bertha’s name, year of birth and state – leaving out her last name entirely, because it was often misspelled, gave the names and birthplace of her parents, and luckily, the first document to show up was the 1920 census that I was looking for.
I know it’s not always that easy, and I could have edited the “new search” but I’m much more comfortable with “old search”, and perfectly happy with it, so I always go back to it.
Although this topic that was not that easy to comment on – since there was no “read more” button, it did generate many “comments”, and most voiced the same negative opinion about “new search”, so lets hope “they” understand that there are many of us who LIKE “old search”, want to see it stay, not have it ignored, and certainly not messed with!

By: Peggy Miller

Peggy Miller — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:17:28 +0000

Please change give us back at least the option to do an old search!
This HORRIBLE.

By: Adele Anderson

Adele Anderson — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:35:20 +0000

I’ve already commented that I do not care for the new search, but the old search (preferred) has changed a bit too, I believe. That said . . .

Whatever happened to the search form that upon typing a few letters of the individual’s name allowed the other information on that individual to pop into the form? I miss that form ability and find that not having it sort of discourages me from searching as readily as I once did.

Since member connect seems to randomly pull similarly-named individuals into it, rather than specifically-named individuals, I would find it helpful to be able to go through 75 or so potential member connects by first ticking the ones I wish to ignore; then, globally ignoring them rather than having to click each one separately causing it to re-load the page and return in order to do the next one (a huge waste of time). I usually just wind up not examining each and marking the entire file ignored (too lazy? lack of patience? not a true genealogist? does it matter since I pay a yearly fee?)

By: Diane Sheppard

Diane Sheppard — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:26:47 +0000

The New Search results are totally unacceptable.
You waste far to much time trying to get what you could see in one screen using the old search function.

Although you stated that the old search function would remain the same, you have changed the search screen and the results. The stars system doesn’t even work properly. You need to go back to the old search form where you could designate whether you wanted exact matches, soundex or miracode and the option of using wildcards such as an *.

Now, if you do a search in the old form you get no results even though the individuals are in the various census (as an example) or birth, marriage or death records. The only way you can get to those records is if you accept less than five stars. This is ridiculous considering that there are over 20 exact matches that only rate 3 stars!!

The results should be presented first in a summary screen the way the old search results were presented by Census, Birth, military, etc.

Don’t mess with success! Bring back the old search exactly as it was before as well as the way that the results were presented!

Diane

By: Julia Manca di Villahermosa

Julia Manca di Villahermosa — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:07:44 +0000

How can I merge similar data? Such as Spouse and Children with conflicting spelling or dates. To me some are the same.
If I cancel one does it cancel the whole record?