Excessive Ancestry search "results"

[nigelp]

It now seems to throw up anyone who has ever kissed someone called Parry or spoken to one in the street 

Maybe that's an American's idea of logic,but it ain't mine !!!

Carol

Not quite. It is limited to men named George!   

Nigel

[carol8353]

Not quite. It is limited to men named George!   

Nigel

Oooops- maybe not then.

Mind you I could still be right Nigel 

My point was,that at least the first couple of pages each time seem to bear no relation to the search asked for!

Carol

[FosseWay]

It came up as the new page but tucked away in the corner 'old search' . I
have added it to my favourites hoping that it will help if ...  

Unfortunately, that doesn't work reliably. I have favorites saved for the Ancestry collections I use most often, including the UK Census Collection and post-1916 BMDs, and these were either created before the new search was introduced, or I've made sure to recreate them from the old search page. Nevertheless, they will sometimes default to the new search for no apparent reason, with no obvious change to my favorites. It seems that they're trying to force people into using the new search by dumping them in it at random and hoping they stay there, the chances of which are higher because there are so few pages on which the option to return to the old search appears.

I think the issue with leaving the exact matches box unticked on Ancestry is the very broad view the Ancestry search engine takes of what constitutes a 'relevant' link to the search terms entered. I'll often search with exact matches off on names on FindMyPast, because the search term 'Ann' will give me 'Anne', 'Annie' etc. without me having to enter these separately. It won't, however, give me 'George'. The Ancestry one may well do this because it finds someone whose date and place of birth is close to what you've entered, but whose name is George rather than Ann. I can understand the computer logic behind this, but really the programmers need to sort it out such that the absolute minimum of results are given that are extremely unlikely to be relevant. It's very unlikely, for example, for there to be a George--Ann transcription confusion, for example.

[stonechat]

Remeber on Ancestry you can use soundex searches or Ann* to search for a number of variations

[CaroleW]

Hi Stonechat

Have you read my initial post?   

I am well aware of the wildcard option having used it for years to overcome the poor transcription on Ancestry - it does not work on the BM's at the moment

Use George Parry as your "test case" - select births 1916-2005 and use the Exact search option and search using the wildcard option Geo** Parr** with nothing else to narrow the search. 

Now have a look at your results - there should be 2,521 and the first "match" starts with letter A - not Parr**

Now untick the Exact search option and do the same again