There seems to be multiple issues here that might prevent you finding wills (not even including the accuracy of name transcription
):
1. The placenames that pop up are only the standardly spelt, and located, places Ancestry has in their index- so you may be missing entries with variations in spelling of the placename because you can't use wildcards.
2. The place may have been in an old regional area that Ancestry doesn't understand, i.e. old Kingdoms, colonies, or Empires.
3. You can't use the keywords field to get round the problem. A few examples of how many wills the National Archives PCC Will search shows up vs an Ancestry PCC will search:
https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=5111http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/wills-1384-1858/Ancestry PCC will search for 'Aldershot, Hampshire' =
28
National Archives PCC will search for 'Aldershot*' =
67
Ancestry PCC will search for 'Wokingham, Berkshire' =
436
National Archives PCC will search for 'wok*n*h*m* berk*' =
573
It's
even worse for non UK places:
Ancestry PCC will search for 'Bombay, Maharashtra' =
87
National Archives PCC will search for 'bomb*y*' =
402
Ancestry PCC will search for 'Smyrna, Izmir, Turkey' =
11
National Archives PCC will search for 'smyrn*' =
46
Presumably this applies to all other will collections too that have placenames that are spelt in an old fashioned way, or included in an old region that Ancestry doesn't understand. This could be pretty easily solved by allowing use of wildcards in placenames - I could have sworn that used to be possible, but it doesn't seem to be anymore
.