Ancestry index only showing county of birth?

[Eking]

I have noticed today that Ancestry is only showing county of birth on the index.

Presumably they have dropped that field in favour of the new matching column. Anybody else think this is a backward step ? 

I like to look down the list and see the places of birth then I can decide if there is a match. After all places of birth are often spelt incorrectly.

This was on the 1891 screens.  On the 1881 screens they have dropped county of residence. I have not checked 1871,1901 yet.

[bekahsgran]

Hi
I have just been to Ancestry and find the changes terrible, even if you put in every fact, name, age, residence, place of birth (in fact everything) it still brings up between 300 & 3,000 matches. Okay so they are starred as to relevance, but that still doesn't make the searching any easier. Just put in a name, age and county and town of birth and still got 3,000 matches with the age ranging from 3-71 and places ranging all over the place.
So why ask for the info in the first place, might as well just put in a name and keep your fingers crossed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I for one wont be renewing a subscription.
Anne

[Heather D]

Well I can help a bit with Anne's problem as the same thing happened to me! If you look at the top of your search box, there are two tabs.

By default you are searching on best matches, but if you click on the Exact Matches tab, you can search as before and only get the results you want.

Do agree though that the changes - especially the lack of birthplace on view - are a step backwards 

Heather

[bekahsgran]

Heather
Thanks for that, I must be losing it (slowly) nebver even noticed the tabs. Must have been seeing too much red at the time to notice
 
Merry Xmas
Anne

[Heather D]

Don't tell anyone Anne, but someone had to point that one out to me 

Merry Christmas to you too, and hope you don't feel so daft now!

Heather

[bekahsgran]

Dont feel quite such a duh..................... now
Thanks
Anne

[Eking]

I still think the changes are horrrible and really unhelpful.  A backward step.

If I had paid a subscription I would be asking for my money back, based on that fact that it is not the service I that I would have seen on a trial basis.

I'm currently using the free access (due to expire in a few days) and was thinking of a subscription but not so sure now.

The only option I get are Exact or Soundex
and Soundex not working.
Tried Soundex on Thomas Birch age 26 in 1871 and it pulled up 3 Thomas Birch age 26 but I had to do a separate search to get Thomas Berch age 26.

[PaulineJ]

I did see something on the rootsweb boards which indeicated that they had 'inadvertently' turned off the parish result for the birthplace (and of course they can't mend it immediately can they)?

http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/message/an/topics.ancestry.uk-ire/334.1
Pauline

[Eking]

Aargh I give up


I now put in Thomas Berch age 25 ( soundex) and halfway down the first page it gives me some 25 yr olds list which include Birch and Berch and they have a lesser 'match' rating than Thomas Berch age 16 months

As far as I can tell the 'best match' tab is only there when you go via census collection not when doing further searches in individual census.

You can tell I'm frustrated can't you

'If it aint broke don't fix it'....

Update:  at least I've found him now - he was using his middle name George instead!