Ancestry.com Search Enhancements Webinar, July 30th

Ancestry____logo1.bmpCome learn about all of the features available in the new Ancestry.com search. Here’s your chance to hear from Kendall Hulet, Ancestry.com search product manager, as he demonstrates all of the tools in Ancestry.com’s new search – now available on the site.

Among the features he will showcase include:

  • Record Previews
  • Image Snapshots
  • Refined Searches
  • Type-ahead Tools
  • Global Searches
  • Advanced Searches
  • Filters
  • Keyword Searches

There will be a 20-minute Q&A session afterward.  (Free registration is required.) Click here to register.  

One thought on “Ancestry.com Search Enhancements Webinar, July 30th

  1. I posted this earlier on the Ancestry blog, in the quaint expectation that the powers that be at Ancestry might get a clue. I’m copying it here in hopes of eliciting additional comments and suggestions from fellow Ancestry users/subscribers:

    So here’s the situation: Ancestry has a New Search that is so poorly designed that, months after Beta-testing and full rollout, 90% of users prefer the old search. The vast majority of blog readers deeply dislike it, and have taken the time to post detailed explanations—here and elsewhere—of why New Search does not work well and is, in fact, even more inadequate and less efficient and less ergonomic than the Old Search.

    Ancestry’s response? A Webinar, hosted by the Director of Product Management, accompanied by a Senior PR manager and a PR manager. They intend to acquaint us with all the spiffy new features of New Search.

    Ancestry seems to think the problem is that users don’t like *change* and don’t adapt to cool new software with lots of pop-ups, click-to-open data fields and spiffy graphics. Hey, Ancestry! Guess what? We’re not a bunch of head-in-the-sand Luddites. We LIKE technology. We LIKE new software, but only as long as it WORKS BETTER than the old stuff. We adapt EASILY to WELL-DESIGNED products! This Webinar sounds like more sizzle and still no steak from the folks at Ancestry.

    Skip the spin! Here’s the Webinar I WOULD attend: Get a panel of experienced amateur and professional genealogists, of varying ages, geographical locations, and areas of research interest, all of whom have used Ancestry for their regular research for at least two years (and make sure to include a few CGs, FASGs and the like while you’re at it), and begin the Webinar with the researchers affirming that:

    (1) They now use New Search regularly, and
    (2) They get more (and better quality) hits, and
    (3) They get fewer meaningless hits, and
    (4) They find New Search’s interface more logical, ergonomic, faster, and easier to use, and
    (5) They find it easier to sort and resort search results, and
    (6) The wildcard (*) function finally works with less than three initial characters, and
    (7) Exact searches really give exact answers with easily set (and altered) parameters, and
    (8) In general, the time they spend on Ancestry is more productive and more user-friendly than before, and then:
    (9) They show us how it works (which, when you think about it is STILL pretty pitiful, because if the New Search was actually WELL-DESIGNED, we wouldn’t need a panel of experts to figure it out!).

    Now THAT’S a Webinar I’d like to see.

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