Genealogy Chat

Hopefully someone can answer, when you put names in your tree if there is a match with another GR member you get the tree symbol, which sometimes has exact match and sometimes not, but i have since found exact matches by doing a search myself but on my tree they are not showing up. It makes me wonder if i will have to put each name in the search engine myself which would take forever. I thought GR did this for us with hot matches as well. It was just pot luck that i put these names in myself and got an exact match and since found a connection with my family.

Thanks Tracy

Hi Tracy,

I saw a thread recently where someone quoted a comment from GR, to the effect that they restrict us to 100 hotmatches at any given time to "stop people becoming overwhelmed".

I have yet to locate where this quoted comment comes from, so don't take my word for it, alone.

If it turns out to be right, then it makes sense to go through your hotmatches list after they've updated (like this week) and prune out all the ones where the place of birth entry mismatches locations which you know to be correct.

In your case, it's either due to hitting the 100 limit or there could be other discrepancies - if you put the year of birth as 1874 (because you are in possession of all the facts) and the other person puts 1875 (because they're just at the guessing stage) then that doesn't count as a match, as far as the GR system is concerned.

When you search manually, you will be making allowances for small date discrepancies like that and concentrating more on matching place of birth, perhaps.

I don't know for certain but I think that if you keep the tick for 'not sure of exact birth year' in place, even when you have the exact year determined, then it increases the chances of a match with someone else who hasn't got it quite right yet, since it allows +/- a few years of slack when assessing the match.

If I'm right then it might be an idea to keep the tick in place on all the /siblings/ of your direct ancestors, since that's the point where your tree will join with theirs.


regards,

Mark

I find I get matches where the name and date are the same but a totally different part of the country!
If someone is searching and puts in an approximate date,even if it matches yours in every other respect it does not show,the system seems to work with dates only,like Tracy I do a search myself every so often!
Bet

Mark, and others

You will find the mention of 100 matches at a time on the GR Help Pages. In fact there are answers to many other questions that are regularly asked on these forums there, so it is worth a look.

Click on the Help Centre Tab at the top right then on "Searching for relations" and "Hot Matches" on the left under FAQs then look at Hot Matches. It also says why place names aren't currently matched, another question that comes up regularly.

I think, because of the 100 names at a time rule, it is possible for some of your names to be matched but not the other persons and so on. Presumably in the fullness of time more of your names will match with theirs, and vice versa. But I would have though once you have made the contact with a person and have let each other see your trees, , the no of names in Hot Matches doesn't matter that much.

Thanks Peter, I will go and look that section up.

Somehow, I was already familiar with the reasons why they don't set place of birth as a search criteria - it's that thing again where family memory in one branch has the right location and the other branch has 'lost' that information, so the best they can do is "UK", or "England" but not the right town.

If p.o.b. was made part of the criteria, the side with the vague locations would never get the opportunity to see the potential matches, making the work of establishing contact (i.e. paying out for the sub) rather one-sided.



Mark

Mark I think the post that you mention was mine


Claire in Wales
07/11/2007 11:33:23
To quote, Genes "set the limit to 100 matches as any more can be quite overwhelming."
These are done in alphabetical order as XXXX as quite rightly worked out.
At one time I added a family of very common names to my tree & asked if I could be "overwhelmed" just to get it over & done with but they couldn't oblige.
Edit | Delete | Add

The information as included in an email that I received from GR when I was moaning about not getting any hotmatches

Hi all, thanks for the info that has helped, i will have to put names in search myself more often or i could be waiting forever for hotmatches.

many thanks

Tracy