Comments on: Using Ancestry: Ancestry Search Review, by Juliana Smith

by: Charlou Dolan

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:13:52 +0000

If you’re searching for a George, be sure to also search for the spelling Geroge because Ancestry.com has this typo 10,000s of times, on their census indexes and other indexes. When I pointed this out to them, they said they were unable to fix it but that I could make the corrections one person at a time using the correct menu. Sure… if I had several hundred hours to devote to the task. QUESTION: If I can do a search and replace on my database, why can’t ancestry.com do a search of their indexes for Geroge and replace with George? It’s not as if Geroge were a legitimate name — it’s just a typo brought on by the arrangement of the keys on a keyboard.

by: Peter Prescott

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:01:36 +0000

Like Nancy Tollefson I would like to print out an article on Ranked Searches which I missed. How do I do this please?

by: George

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:03:27 +0000

Agree with Sharon’s comment. Search results are random at best. What is a 3 star rating? What is a 4 star rating? Why do census results display when the search criteria indicated that the person died 10 years earlier and it is a 3 star match? Why can we not sort results? Why do search results indicate a 3 star rank when you asked for person born in Ohio and your displayed results are born in Florida? I have asked ancestry before, but get FAQ answers with no substance.

by: Mary A Dominguez

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 01:39:43 +0000

9.09.09 Juliana, I have enjoyed your article on Ranked because over the past year I have tried the specific data information and ended up ranked. So now I do not bother taking the time when I do have my information with me to put it in.
I may try it again but will be aware of the sticky keys. Thanks. –Mary Forgette Dominguez

by: Tyler

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 12:47:21 +0000

Nancy, I’m just another reader of this post, and the best answer for you requires more data than I have available.

However one answer, if you have Adobe Acrobat (or one of it’s PDF-making “clones”, also standard on Mac OS X) — you could “print” the page to a PDF. Then, look at the PDF-document to see the appropriate pages and print only that range of pages (of course, you’ll probably get a little beginning of comments on the last page unless you further edit the PDF document).

BTW, with Windows, pdf-CREATING software such as Acrobat is required — that is the free Adobe Reader permits reading but not creation of PDFs.

Of course, another approach would be to just copy and paste the relevant part of the article into your word-processor and then print from there.

by: Nancy Tollefson

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 16:29:13 +0000

I would like to print out your excellent articles. I don’t want to print the comments along with printing the article.

How can I do that?

by: Kent Forrest

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 01:30:04 +0000

Thank you. I think many people have had “trouble” with selecting the various “stars” search delimiter and did not realize HOW TO TURN IT OFF. Ancestry.com should always revert the “stars” to 5 after each search.

I agree with other that the “fuzzy” logic search results should also offer an option of an internal “sort” by census year, etc. It is very frustrating when you have thousands of names in a list and have to weed your way through them. This is not very database friendly.

Good article…. keep it up !

by: Diane

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 20:30:24 +0000

Thanks for the detailed explanation behind the ranked search. I use ranked search all the time with census records. I often pick an unusual first name, and put both parents first names in along with county. It’s a good way to get around transcription errors and different spelling of surnames.

by: Jos Smith

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:27:18 +0000

This was a great help! I was very frustrated trying to use Searches; this should really help. Mine seems to be stuck on 2 Star searches. So, now maybe I can change that. THANKS!

by: Sharon Tabor

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:40:23 +0000

Unfortunately, Ancestry.com does Ranked Search within the Exact Search Census grouping. They no longer put the Census years in chronological order, and it can be very frustrating having to scroll through the census looking to see if the year you are hoping an ancestor will be there.

I have asked Ancestry.com why they changed the Census results, and all I get is an explanation of the Exact Search vs Ranked Search, and they don’t seem to understand that the Exact Search acts the same as the Ranked Search.

I am at the point in several families that I am looking for descendants of ancestral siblings and exact names and years are not always feasible to search individual census records - and the current Census rankings add a lot of time to the search