« on: Wednesday 27 January 10 01:46 GMT (UK) »
Hallelujah! Ancestry has announced changes to the way wildcards can be used in searches.
Improved Wildcard flexibility has been one of the our most requested feature updates. So to start out 2010 on a happy note, we’ve updated our wildcard functionality.
Previously, you had to use three characters and then either a * or a ?. We’ve made a few changes:
- Now you can put a wildcard first, such as *son or ?atthew to catch all of those crazy spellings and variations that our ancestors came up with.
- Either the first or last character must be a non-wildcard character. For example, Han* and *son are okay, but not *anso*
- Names must contain at least three non-wildcard characters. For example, Ha*n is okay, but not Ha*
These changes apply to both simple search and advanced search, and both old and new search.
These changes are exactly what I'd been hoping would happen at Ancestry.
Canada: Patterson, Brown, Haidenger/Heidinger, Meyer, Johnston(e), Gorsuch, Kitchin/Kitchen
United States: Patterson, Smith, Brown, Vance, Bower(s), Newberry, Best, Love, Gorsuch
England (Northumberland): Brown, Whitfield, Henderson
Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife, East Lothian): Johnston(e), Bell, Galloway, Campbell, Robertson, Williamson, Thomson, Crawford
Germans from Russia: Haidenger/Heidinger, Meyer, Meach, Lorenz
