Search Function with Census Records

Cherie Ailene Morgan

I know there has been plenty of negative feedback on the new search. And I know that adding my frustration to that list is like dropping a pebble into the ocean. But I do have to say that there are some serious flaws in the search. So if Family Search insists on moving forward with this new method, here is at least one major change that needs to take place.

When searching for a name in a census search, the census results don't even show which city or county the search result is from. So if I'm looking for a Robert Johnston born in New York between the years of 1881 to 1885, I cannot narrow down which one might be correct without clicking on every single result!

Why would the city and county of the census be taken off the search results? This GREATLY complicates the user experience.

Paul W

@Cherie Ailene Morgan

I know from experience of using the England & Wales census for 1851 that some counties do not have a town / village displayed on the "top" page - this inconvenience has persisted for years.

However, I just performed a search for John Smith individuals resident at Westchester (New York State) in the 1900 census and could narrow my results down to 46 (45 of which appeared to match exactly). I made sure "Exact" boxes were all checked and filtered on "Collection" - choosing "United States Census,1900".

See https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?exactSearching=true&f.recordType=3&q.givenName=john&q.givenName.exact=on&q.residenceDate.from=1900&q.residenceDate.to=1900&q.residencePlace=westchester%2A&q.residencePlace.exact=on&q.surname=smith&q.surname.exact=on

I don't have much previous experience of searching US census collections, so cannot compare the search process before/after the recent changes, but I don't see a serious problem in making this type of search - just enter the exact place name and the algorithm seems to work okay, even (in this case) Westchester does not appear until you open up the individual records.

(The only thing the above page does not show is the Collection I searched on. But checking the boxes, as illustrated, cut my initial number of results considerably.)

Paul W

I just read elsewhere that this is a known bug that is being worked on by the engineers. Meanwhile, as I say, searching on a place name will still work. I would always advise adding a wildcard, however - e.g. input as Westchester*. If there are a number of places in the world that share a particular name, a "No results found" message is often produced unless you add the wildcard!

Hoskisson D Brent

They seem to have fixed this. Make sue you go to "More options", then select the "preferences" option. Then under display options select either Default information or All information. The search results default to Minimal information which will not include the residency information.

Brent Hoskisson