Database problems at Ancestry?

Because my matches are the first ones that always appear and sometimes I forget to change the test I’m looking at!

But you’re right, my parents tests are much better when it comes to it.

 

Yes, I got my results in June last year, & I noticed fairly early on that searches weren't always finding matches I expected to show up in the list of results. I suspect this may have been mainly down to the limitations of this search, though sometimes it seemed like something else might be amiss.

One of the issues I have with searching DNA matches is that restricting the search by adding a place name is very much hit and miss. With uncommon surnames I don't add a location and the resulting list of matches is usually either very short or non-existent. However, searching for a more common surname without a location can produce an unmanageably long list of results to go through.

The location search, however, only searches on birth place and so relies on DNA cousins having (a) entered a birth place, and (b) entered it in Ancestry's standardised format. Thus adding a location to the search (however broadly defined) means that many genuine matches will not show up in the list of results, and I not uncommonly find a lengthy list of results shrinks to no results at all.

So I wholly support your method of searching matches, and anyone trying to work through tens of thousand of matches one by one is likely to end up feeling overwhelmed and disillusioned. But I think it is also worthwhile looking at individuals and checking for shared matches as well as looking through available trees, as this may pick up things a search has missed. I do this as a matter of course with all new matches, and have also done it for all matches where the confidence is rated good and above.

 

Except that, when searching trees generally, you can specify locations other than birth places, and you can refine your search in other ways too. With the DNA search, specifying a country may be sufficient to bring the results down to a more manageable level (though sometimes more specific is needed), but it still won't pick up those for whom a birth place hasn't been entered.

It is with our more distant DNA matches that the search method is most needed, yet with these matches our link is often as distant cousins. And the further back we go with our trees, the less likely it is that we will know an ancestor's or relative's birth place.

 

Yes absolutely jorghes and will follow through as you say. Thanks

 

I guess it goes against the grain to enter an assumed date or place of birth (however broadly defined) into my tree, as it was always somewhat frowned upon to do so - too reminiscent of IGI submissions etc. And with surnames like Price and Jones in my tree I might add England as the assumed birthplace only to later discover it was actually Wales.

Agreed, though how often it is necessary to include a birthplace will vary from person to person, depending on how may matches, and how many common surnames, they have.

 

Which relies on other people having done what I wouldn’t want to do myself.

 

It’s all rather academic at present, anyway, because getting back on topic, the search doesn’t seem to be working properly. If I search my matches for Smith I get around 150 results. Adding in England as a location reduces the list to about 60. When I add in a county the list reduces substantially but when I check the results something has gone wrong.

If I try the search with Norfolk I get just one match, but it doesn’t find my sister, which it should as we have Norfolk Smiths with a full birthplace entered. When I check the one match it does find, I find they have 7 Smith ancestors in their tree, all in - Gloucestershire!!

From the checking I’ve done it seems searching on birthplace alone works OK, but when searching on both surname and location things go haywire.

 

Agreed - searching on both seems to include results which match either but not both.

Perhaps it's part of the problem that puts my direct ancestor as born just north of Manchester in a place called Portsmouth, Hampshire, England

 

I'm still trying to figure out what happened to my invisible person... I added in all this information, and Ancestry has "deleted" him, and replaced him with an un-editable, grey box image as if I never entered all that information in the first place. I have attempted numerous times to add the information back in... and Ancestry refuses to let me (It tells me I've done it, but the ghost doesn't change.). Last time I checked, he and all his information was completely fine on FTM.

 

I was just about to suggest that Tim. Jorges if you go into "tree overview" and then click on "people" you will be able to see if you have duplicate entries for anyone in your tree.

 

No duplicate entry for that particular individual, he doesn't appear on the search at all.

Here is the same individual on FTM immediately after syncing my trees: