Comments on: We’re launching Ancestry.com Labs – and we’d love your feedback

By: Tony Macklin

Tony Macklin — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:30:16 +0000

Hi Kathy Re: #73 and #77,

Thanks for posting, and I’m sorry to hear you’re experiencing issues.

We’re aware of a couple of problems affecting FTM that will be fixed in our scheduled Maintenance later this week

As this is not the focus of this post, I’ll be contacting you directly by email to get more details of the issue you’re experiencing, and to make sure it will be resolved by these changes.

regards

Tony

By: Kathy

Kathy — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:21:17 +0000

Gee Tony, Being head of search, I thought for sure you could give me an answer to my problem – #73. NO ONE at Ancestry will give me an answer, just when do you expect this problem to be fixed? All I hear is “we’re aware of the problem”, no one will even tell me if they are working on the problem, let alone when it will be fixed. If we are talking days, I can wait, but it has been two weeks now and I don’t like paying for what I can’t use.

By: Andy Hatchett

Andy Hatchett — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 16:51:44 +0000

Robin,

In my previous post I mentioned several blog entries concerning your question.

Here are the articles you might want look at to get a more complete picture of what is involved when a search is done.

http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/?s=exact+search

By: Andy Hatchett

Andy Hatchett — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:56:31 +0000

Robin.

The short answer to your question is that the basic global search form was never meant to perform an exact search.

There have been several Blog entries and postings on several of the message boards that go into detail about this over the last year or so.

I rarely use the global search. I decide what information I need and then, using the card catalog, try to find the database that such information would be in. I then go to that database and use a filtered Advanced search to do an exact search. I’ve found this much more successful. I may have to do a few more searches but I get less non-applicable results to sift thru so in the long run I save time.

By: Robin

Robin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:48:08 +0000

I again used this to search (no more privacy issues, thank you) and got NO new information. I would like a question answered that I have had for a while. When I have a John Smith, born in Anytown, Any State USA with supporting documents attached, why doesn’t ACOM’s search engine limit the search results to people that match John Smith in Anytown, Any State? I get results from everywhere USA plus a couple hundred European results thrown in, when nothing I have entered suggests this person ever left the USA. Why can’t, with today’s technology, search results be much more targeted and relevant? Thank you for listening.

By: Kathy

Kathy — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 22:55:55 +0000

Before adding new fefatures, PLEASE fix what you already are to offer that doesn’t work! Ancestry.com is toatally useless to me now since the feature where FTM and Ancestry communicate with hints is not working. Tech support says “they are aware of the problem”, yet will not give me any kind of timeframe for the issue to be resolved. The money I have spent on Ancestry.com is totally wasted as this is the most important feature to me. If I cannot be given a reasonable time frame for the fix (has been about 10 days now) I will cancel my subsription to ancestry.

By: Jo

Jo — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:31:00 +0000

I think it’s useless and a waste of time.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:26:03 +0000

Nice blog, Tony. New lab is pretty cool…

By: Richard L Morgan

Richard L Morgan — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:32:52 +0000

Ever heard of GenSmarts.Co now version 2? Genealogy.com had sold it, not sure it was ever supported by Ancestry.com – One problem, it actually works.

Genealogy.com reached where Ancestry.com has finally arrived today – and quickly became useless?

By: Andy Hatchett

Andy Hatchett — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 18:37:38 +0000

Jade Re: #68

My guess is that the long term targets are all those non-Ancestry web sites.

The ability to search family trees and Ancestry’s offerings were probably added so as to have data available before the off-site web sites come on line and really aren’t the true focus of this feature -sort of an online equivalent of the Web Search feature in Family Tree Maker.