FamilyTree FIND not picking up matching person

Dennis J Yancey

I continue to find various FamilyTree Searches that dont actually pick up matching people

Here is a search for Benjamin Ulrich born in 1809 in Pennyslvania

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here is the query that does not pick him up

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/find/name?self=Benjamin%7CUlrich%7C0%7C0&gender=male&birth=%7C1809-1809%7C0%7C0&spouse=Catherine%7C%7C0%7C0

Is there some issue with keeping database indexes up to date and in sync with the real data

why do these failed queries keep showing up - and then after a few days they fix themselves . . .

R.G. Bennett

I just tried your search with wide and narrow parameters and found the same problem. I also checked spellings which is sometimes a problem. I may be able to partially respond to your query (I'm not a computer guy nor a Family Search volunteer). There may be a couple of reasons:

1. The system is good but not always perfect so sometimes the search engine criteria doesn't get everything. Cross referencing with other systems such as Ancestry will often bring up data that wasn't found in Family Search (although I find Family Search has about 80% of what Ancestry has).
2. Syncing updated data may take a bit of time to catch up. With the databases at my work, we often have 1-7 days for data entered to sync throughout the system as the information gets picked up or backed up by the software systems we use. This is just a population delay found when multiple servers, often in different locations, are used to backup data.
3. It may relate to not having attached sources. I noticed for this person, there were no attached sources but others that were prioritized in the search list did. This may have something to do with matching criteria in the search algorithm in the search engine that will put more emphasis on more active or complete records. If the data was input by FamilySearch without sources (which does happen) the search may be different but the more sources you add, the more the probability that the name will surface faster.

dontiknowyou

I have seen similar issues many times with Find. Searching is not highly reliable and I know to repeat searches periodically.

I collaborate with many others on Family Tree, globally. On one project our changes were taking days to synch and this caused problems as we would sometimes accidentally clobber one another's edits.

Gordon Collett

Here is another interesting fact to add to your puzzle and for the engineers to check out.

Normally, at least every time I have used the function and in all the cases I just randomly checked except one, when you click on the Find Similar People link, the top person on the list is the person you originated the search from. Trying this from your Benjamin Ulrich, he is not there.

The one other exception is a gentleman I was looking at this morning from a post reporting the problem that two duplicate children refused to merge. One of the copies of him does show up at the top of the Similar People list, the other does not.

NidaFL

We Used the search parameters shown on the left, and he came right up. It is a puzzle why some records are not as easily found

Gordon Collett

And now when using the Find Similar People link, he shows right up a the top of the list as he is supposed to. Apparently, as Dennis stated above, "then after a few days they fix themselves."

Fixing themselves could be one of two things. Either it is due to different parts of the database taking time to sync properly or someone with the ability to fix underlying data saw Dennis' post and fixed Benjamin manually.