Genealogy Chat

One of the ways in which I try and get value from my GR sub is to search for my main family names/places of origin to see whether there have been recent additions bu potential new contacts. Recently, I have noticed, that when I enter a surname and a village place combination (usually for new additions within 14 days), I get several hits for the right name, but in the wrong place. I have contacted a couple of people this way, but it has been apparent that there is NO connection with the place I searched on, and I wonder whether my experience is typical.

You don't want to check your 'Hot Matches' then! If you have a John Smith from London in your tree, you will be matched with every John Smith on here, even the ones born in Timbuktoo! Sam x

Well no, and I can't imagine why anyone would bother with the stupid not-matches. Searching on a specific name/place/date combination seems much more sensible, but I still get strange and unconnected hits.

This has happened to me too. I suppose the reason GR is set up this way is becauase of the wide variety of ways people could enter birth places....villages... parishes.... census registration districts.... confusion between the old counties and the current counties.... so tehy thought it better to concentrate on name and year matches and ignore any discrepancies with birth places. I have a good example - a birth cert for an ancestor born in the village of Fernham in the registration sub-district of Shrivenham in the registration district of Faringdon in the county of Berkshire!! And its now in the modern-day county of Oxfordshire!!!

I switched my hot matches off ages ago, they really are completely useless. I agree though that if you are searching for something specific, you should only be given relevant results. The problem seems to be that there is no standard way of recording places of birth. For example, most of my relatives come from Burslem, Stoke on Trent. Some people enter place of birth as Burslem, some as Stoke, some as Stoke on Trent, some as Burslem Stoke on Trent etc etc. This site has no way of realising that these are all the same and therefore it probably brings up all names that match and ignores the place of birth. Sam x

There is no matching on place names for the reasons Sam has quoted. GR acknowledge this which is why I get vocal when people keep bleating on about it. You can imagine the uproar when West Brom hasn't been matched against W. Bromwich I have had experience with name matching in a professional capacity and believe me, it is not that simple, and it does require an awful lot of computing capacity because each variation has to be searched multiple times against each combination. I wouldn't dismiss them altogether though, after all they are just another tool in the armoury - you don't have to use them. You can get the same results by searching manually, although it will take you longer, and you still have to decide which names to follow up or not.

Who's bleating, Peter? If I search for Morgalla (or whatever) in West Bromwich, I wouldn't actually expect to get matches with W. Brom or any other variant: I'm just expecting a direct match on the text string I have entered. It either matches my search criterion or it doesn't. If soundex (or similar) is offered for names, then I know that I may get different names, but if I am searching for West Brom, or W. Brom, or West Bromwich, I really shouldn't get results for Bloxwich - and that is what I am getting for my little Notts village.

I completely understand what you are saying Titus, but what if another member had a completely bona fide, verified, family tree for your Morgella family but had chosen to enter the POB as West Brom rather than West Bromwich? You would miss out on a potentially fantastic link to someone. You could spend all day searching for one person with every possible variation of West Bromwich that you could think of. I guess this site would rather match everything possible rather than miss a potential match because someone had spelled something wrongly or differently. I can't see an ideal that would suit everyone. Sam x

There is no easy answer, it seems, which is my point. If you do a single name search on, say W Brom, it WILL bring up all possibilities, which causes Titus a problem because it IS checking for similarities on place name. So, to do this across all names aka Hotmail may not be a good idea then? You can not have it both ways.

No, I think Titus is saying that when he enters Birmingham as a birth place, he's getting York!!! If you are entering speicifc criteria in the SEARCH box, then you should only be getting results specific to that search, not some will nilly stuff that GR think you might be interested in! Or have I misunderstood you, Titus? OC

That's right, OC. I am searching for apples and getting pears: places wholly unrelated to the village name (which, as it happens, doesn't have any name or spelling variants known to me). If the search algorithm is seeing a connection, then it is based on some very odd basis for matching, and I rather wish it didn't!

OC, I hear what you say but it does not happen when I try it.

Peter, try searching on surname Harrison in Ruddington for 1915 +/- 10 years. Several hits: including one for Ilkeston, Derbys. & one for Cropwell Butler, Notts. That's not the same as W Brom/West Bromwich et al - it's arbitrary - or has the appearance of being. And I contacted Jean (she of Cropwell Butler), who replied to me like a long-lost brother - because she knows of a quite close relative sharing my name, and assumed that I was he - but when I looked at the tree she had kindly shared, it was quite clear that our families have no obvious or known connection, and most certainly, that I was not the person whom she had assumed me to be.

I can understand that defining place names is difficult, but GR could get round this by providing a mandatory drop down box with THEIR list of Counties on it. (Oh, and maybe COUNTRIES, too?) I had a hot match recently, where the place name was given as Wisteria Cottage (not that, exactly) and nothing else. I have no way of knowing whether this is a match or not, and little interest in finding out! OC

Titus Durh! Alright then, but Countries, go on, please let me have Countries... OC

It doesnt help when you grow up with new-fangled counties (Avon) then find that not only have they been altered now (City of Bristol, Bath & North East Somerset) but they dont match with what they used to either (Somerset, Gloucestershire) I could go on as well :) and often do!!!!