Ancestry vs Find My Past

[baggygenes]

Personally like the layout of the results on FindMyPast compared to Ancestry  and not having to fiddle about with dropdown checking this area only and exacts etc so I don't get a load of results that don't match what I entered  but Ancestry will accept wildcards more easily and I do like looking through the trees.

I think its generally agreed there are pros and cons to both sites and some will prefer one to the other. The original question was really whether its worth having both.  I think both sites subscriptions are expensive (and yes understandably so if we want new records to appear and for the sites to run well - better get that in quick) but I guess that is relative to what you can afford and I for one have certainly had my moneys worth out of both of them.

[Candolim_Imp]

Until yesterday, I've only used FindMyPast for the free 1911 during the World Cup and I used the indeces from FindMyPast and the 1911 official site combined to glean information to then narrow searches down to find them in the census summary books on Ancestry (before the transcriptions were online). I found this cheat to be very helpful, as I could use name of head of household to determine number of occupants.

I did join last night. I couldn't find the voucher code box and ended up buying it at the full price, thinking the voucher code would come up on the next page. However, when I complained they insisted it had been there, but gave me a refund of the 10%.

Up to now, I doubt I'll keep it beyond the year, as I've got quite adept at creative wildcard searching on Ancestry and I can usually find the census returns I need. Ancestry is far superior for Lancashire church records & directories, especially Liverpool. I like Ancestry seach engine and that I can search counties on a full site search & get a summary of all datasets in one search. However, It was good to get a proper scan of my GGGG uncle's army discharge papers of 1834 (which I bought from the NA years ago, but as a black & white photocopy - now I have a colour scan). It has also been amazing to get my partner's uncle's photo (who was a merchant sailor, drowned in 1940) and grandfather from Africa who he never met. So the merchant navy and armed forces datasets are nice to have, if only for a year.

[hobbit_49635]

Hi all,

If you want to join FindMyPast time in the following code "fmp10" for 10% off the price.

Hope this helps

Dave

[Carly287]

Hi,

I use Ancestry at my local library,but a friend lets me look on her find my past. I think find my past is better,as its better set out!

[kevinf2349]

I have both Ancestry and FindMyPast and find both to be extremely useful.

My pet peeve with ancestry is that they present me with stupid 'close matches' when the real 'perfect' match is in a list of thousands of others!

My pet peeve with FindMyPast is that if a census has no match within + or - two years for a particular census, you can't click on the year with 0 matches and tweak the birth year for that year, you have to go back to the modify the initial search .... most frustrating! One with any matches in them, you can modify and re-search, just not those with 0 matches....which are probaly the very ones you want to modify (*rant over*)

Kevin

[baggygenes]

My FindMyPast ran out yesterday .. can't afford to renew and really I need to see some new resources added for areas of interest to make it worth the £ -  but I'm wondering how long I can hold out without resorting to the credit card

[smudwhisk]

My pet peeve with ancestry is that they present me with stupid 'close matches' when the real 'perfect' match is in a list of thousands of others!

If you use the old search and ensure you tick exact matches only, you don't get this problem.  You can use soundex or * in the names with exact matches ticked.

[nkbauer]

I'm thinking about buying a subscription to Find My Past. Is the 1911 Scotland census available on it? Are there different types of subscriptions? If so, which is the best to purchase?
Nan

[andycand]

Hi

Neither Ancestry or FindMyPast have the 1911 Scottish census yet, when they do it is likely that it will only be transcriptions as Scottish census images are only available on Scotlandspeople.

Andy