Make search Results more relevant
Find the code from the OLD search and give similar results with the new search.
I volunteer in a library helping people get started. One of the problems newbies used to have with Family Search is that they would make the search criteria to tight, and they wouldn't get the results they were looking for. In my opinion, that was the NICE thing about FamilySearch, it gave you what you asked for FIRST!
The NEW search doesn't do that. I am asking for Margaret Young who died in California between 1961 and 1961, of my first three results, 2 died outside that range. With the NEW HARD TO READ LOOK where we can only see 2 records, wading through pages of results that are outside the parameters that I entered, is frustrating and time consuming. Having the search results with the most relevant records be first would do a lot to improve the site. That's what the OLD CODE DID!
Vicky
Answers
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I should have mentioned we always have the ability to use Ancestry Library, which never gives you what you ask for either. FamilySearch was my go to aid, because I could help people quickly find their ancestors, because the FamilySearch results were so much more relevant.
I promote FamilySearch and Index for family search because it WAS far superior to Ancestry Library or Ancestry private.
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I did a search using parameters shown at https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?q.deathLikeDate.from=1961&q.deathLikeDate.to=1961&q.deathLikePlace=california%2A&q.givenName=margaret&q.givenName.exact=on&q.surname=young&q.surname.exact=on.
I don't know why the first result has been presented (1958 event, when I searched on 1961-1961), but the other two match exactly. Checking the "Exact" boxes usually reduces the list of results considerably, however.
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Well yes, EXACT is going to reduce the number of returns. If I plunk EXACT next to Margaret it is going to weed out names like Maggie and Madge and M. not something I would want to do, I'd prefer they come after Margaret, but I DON'T WANT RECORDS THAT ARE OUTSIDE THE DATE PARAMETERS AT ALL much less at the top of the list. If they are included, they should come AFTER the records that MATCH my parameters....
The reason I filled in those parameters, is that they match something I KNOW, like the death date on a headstone. I use those parameters to get me the records I am looking for.
The old search did this wonderfully, AND it had more records per page so it was easier to pick the record that I wanted. With the new look and ultra thin font, I only get 2 results on the screen at the same time, and add on the sifting through the search results that are not what you were looking for takes hours. This used to take a matter of minutes.
The new search is acting more like Ancestry, which in my opinion goes out of its way to AVOID giving you relevant results. I always thought this was to force you to hang around longer, and pay more money because it took so long to find relevant results.
Family Search has a superior indexing system. We volunteers have the luxury to spend days on a single hard to read sheet of death records. But now the indexing doesn't do a lot of good if the search mechanism doesn't work.
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I do not disagree with most of the points you make. It is a shame that the engineers and other employees are refusing to accept the new interface has proved a failure, if its purpose was to improve the ease in which we could find the results we were expecting.
Obviously, a lot of resources have been applied to the new interface, so it is difficult to imagine users' wishes will be addressed - i.e. in acknowledging the problems the great majority of users are having, so reverting to the former model, at least until substantial changes are made to address the current problems.
Even though I have to admit that I am mostly able to produce the same results as before, I find nothing that improves my experience in working in FamilySearch and find many negative aspects relating to the new page design. I used to find FamilySearch much easier to use than Ancestry (tons of irrelevant results) and even Find My Past, with its +/- option for a year range, rather than a simple, manual input (like 1830-1850). Sadly, I cannot recommend FamilySearch to genealogists of any level until it addresses the issues that have been so clearly described here and in other threads.
It will be very sad to find those who have said they are quitting this site have chosen to do so - all down to someone deciding it is more important to attract new (dare I say "younger"?) users, rather than ensuring the needs of its existing users continue to be addressed.
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HELLO - Yes something changed with the search not that long ago. I've used this site for years to get back beyond census in the UK and even in the US, it was so simple, just print surname BEACH, add Place name and year range and click it was job done. But I came back to familytree research recently and went to check out a few things and got this new format, I tried entering details for what I wanted to find and got nothing but census details I already have, the "More Options" seemed to make it more complicated, I got nowhere. Before using the old search entering the year range say 1750 to 1800 gave the "Events" happening in that name, place, and time frame, individual baptisms, marriages etc. Now it gives endless census results for someone born in the place in that time frame, but I have all that information but not baptisms and dates 50 or a 100 years before. The old search was simple and it worked. Sorry but others seem to agree. FB
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Yes the whole search thing has gotten convoluted. You can’t get any relevant results unless you get to the MORE OPTIONS screen. It took me Two weeks to figure out how to get the EXACT boxes to show. Revising a search is complicated and unintuitive. And somehow I keep getting results that are outside my parameters.
this may be designed to “attract younger” viewers but in my opinion younger people won’t have the patience to wade through all these records, although they may have a long enough attention span to remember what has scrolled off the screen which is a real hinderence to me. My 17” monitor is to small to view a single record on a single screen with my old eyes.
i prefer less white space and a thicker font. I know this new look is happening everywhere but. It is so hard on us people who have even the slightest visual impairment to use.
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I noticed on the extraneous results (which were computer indexed obituaries) death had 'about [year]' and then obituary date was specific but appeared to be from another referenced page of the paper. So I think these results are being returned because of 'about death date' - the Search sees the about and is 'helpfully' including them in results. But that doesn't explain as you ask why the Search cannot filter them out of Results because of specific parameters you asked for. In this circumstance Feedback should be given for these specific results (which I did for a couple - but difficult on phone). The results were returning death type records (at least from first page results) - so the Search appears to largely have returned good results - you just want it to return specific parameter results only - a reasonable request as computer system should be able to sort out results not within parameters. In this case (computer indexed obituaries) without an exact death date (I.e. not 'about nnnn') I believe the Search is returning them even though the obituary date appears 'exact'. Specific to your question then - shouldn't Search Algorithm be able to sort based on the obituary date? I would think so - because death notice/obituary date is commonly defined as after death date (unless death/obit is in error). So that the Search algorithm is not taking this into account is something Familysearch engineers could address (at some point).
Did you find Margaret Young death 1961 California you were searching? If so even with these extraneous results - Search helped return the result you sought.
For zoom and font preferences - I believe you can set those in browser or system settings - I don't think Familysearch page will override those settings.
Thank you for constructively giving Search feedback - Search can always improve (even old Search may have returned extraneous results).
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This was a very simple search, with a semi common name, and the types of results I am complaining about. The old system would give me what I asked for, and then give me a warning before it went beyond the scope of my search parameters, and the things I was searching for came FIRST! With this new search I'm getting results that don't match my criteria.
As far as display goes, yes you can Zoom. But it is the color and thinness of the fonts that is the problem. SUBTLE is PRETTY but it is also VERY HARD TO SEE. For example when IOS 6 came out, ALL THE CONTROLS ON MY iPHONE DISAPPEARED, I was still pre cataract surgery. It was elegant, but unusable. I've since had cataract surgery, and IOS thickened their elegant font and changed the colors to have more contrast. But all the OS and websites seem to be bent on making it harder for people with any kind of fading vision to use their computers for example Windows 10.
On the new search screen on a 17" monitor, I need to be at 110% to see the search boxes, on this screen in order to read the gray print of your response I have to be at 120% to see through the fog. You can't play with the BROWSER FONTS because 90% of the pages you visit overprint when you do that. And the subtle colors are controlled by the CSS sheets of the various websites. And HIGH CONTRAST doesn't work with Subtle colors, they just turn ugly and the use of non-standard pretty colors makes many fields disappear on various websites.
With the old look and feel 100% was just fine, but there has been a change for the subtle thinness.
SEARCH CRITERIA ALL ON ONE SCREEN
On the old system, my search criteria list was all on one screen, On the new system, at 110% The Name is on one screen, you have to scroll down a screen, for EACH CRITERIA and then you get to the bottom of the search criteria, and only SOMETIMES see the SEARCH button. And other times not, hmm, maybe that is realated to the ANY fields self populating, note to self watch for that. You get to the bottom and there is an EXACT Tick, which was confusing as heck, why was there only ONE EXACT, I didn't know that it but the EXACT Boxes on the search criteria that had long since scrolled of the screen!!!! I thought it meant search ALL terms exactly which would have been a horrible option, but seeing what I'm seeing, I thought that fit in with the rest of the new look.
AND THEN THERE IS THE COMPLEXITY
On the old system you used to click SEARCH ->RECORDS to get a usable search which was pretty easy.
On the new system you click SEARCH->RECORDS->MORE OPTIONS and TICK EXACT to get a usable search, two extra steps, and the last one took me 3 weeks of using the system, a heavy familysearch user, to find it. Why not just go there from the time you pick Search->Records.
But it is the REVISE SEARCH that took me forever to figure out. It used to be that I just tweaked the search criteria that were visible on the screen. Now it is so much more complicated.
You do your search, and you hide the MORE OPTIONS screen because it covers 6" of the search results and you HOPE this will give you more than TWO records per screen, but now you get to see the the search criteria taking up 2 inches at the top of the screen so you only get to see 1.5 return record per page. But after a lot of experimentation you have to close the MORE OPTIONS window or the Record information is displayed in that annoying 6" sidebar, taking sometimes 15 page downs to see the entire record. If you close the MORE OPTIONS sidebar the record will appear in full screen.
The FILTERS like Collection are available, but after 3 weeks I just found them they were just a bunch of words on a white background, no indication that they are clickable. Unlike the search criteria that permanently take up a huge chunk of screen-real-estate, the FILTERS scroll off the screen so by the time you need realize you need them you need to scroll all the way to the top to find them.
Having the search criteria on the screen is helpful in figuring out why you are getting the results you are getting, especially since that is the only place you can see them all. It certainly helps with that useless ANY field that sometimes repopulates, but the FILTERS should be under the MORE OPTIONS so you can actually get to them without scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
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You know with the old system, I went from newbie to power user in 2 days, with this new system I have been struggling trying to figure things out for over 3 weeks, and am still having newbie trouble. Part of that was the ANY self-populating bug, that was always happening and now sometimes happens, and the search itself giving me information outside my parameters, but the worst part is the interface is confusing as all get out but I can still memorize it as long as I don't have take a genealogy vacation.
To me he mental taxation of not being able to see all the information at the same time because the screen is so packed with whitespace is the real deal breaker. No amount of practice is going to help me with this issue. It is an aging issue. It is a shame that something that gives older people so much joy, is now relegated to the very young and nimble minded.
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Apparently I no longer have permissions to leave feedback. Too bad because i had reproducible steps that again give that troublesome ANY date field to self populate. But after using three browsers on 2 PCs and even going so far as to set up a new account, trying to enter the FEEDBACK I am repeatedly getting A PERMISSIONS message. I could not access the Feedback page. So I gave up.
I just found this tab still open on my iPad, but now I can’t remember the steps.
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I've given Feedback on 'Any' Life Event populating as well. It certainly appears that if using More Options Life Event - that Familysearch wants that 'Any' populated.
So I think they are aware - just haven't seen any response. I don't know why they chose to default to 'Any' - which can be confusing in Results (if not noted).
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Hi Vicky
"To me he mental taxation of not being able to see all the information at the same time because the screen is so packed with whitespace is the real deal breaker. No amount of practice is going to help me with this issue. It is an aging issue. It is a shame that something that gives older people so much joy, is now relegated to the very young and nimble minded."
I have found this process of the old getting relegated to the background and the young being front and centre happening more and more often nowadays and like you I now need a good defined font and colour. I wonder if the tech bods who designed the new system thought to ask older or less experienced people to test it first. Making things complicated doesn't necessarily make it better. Keep it Simple is best. Adding an easy to find extended search page tab to a basic search page is not difficult.
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There are two ways to filter on collection. One is in the search interface, the other is in the results interface. It is the search interface that allows searching on collection title.[Nah. I am getting confused by the filters in the new search interfaces; some filters eg birth are a run-on block of place names in a popup window but the collection filter is a side bar like the search side bar.]When filtering collections by name I want to see them in context. For example, I tried selecting only census collections, then filtering on Germany. The result was not what I would expect, which is the same list of collections only weeded to show just the Germany ones. Instead, the result is a list without subdivisions of all collections with the word Germany in the title, not just census records but also baptisms, birth, deaths, marriages, etc.
I found this post helpful:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/advanced-strategies-searching-records
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Subtlety and the volunteers at the senior friendly genealogy library.
This morning we were searching for James Griffin who died in 2011 in California. The ONLY result we thought we got was Mr Eiler James Griffin who died in 2007. Well we KNEW that familysearch ignores the death date, but there HAD TO BE MORE THAN 1 person by that name that died in California at some time. But every time we scrolled (with MORE OPTIONS HIDDEN) we reached the bottom of the screen, the whole About Volunteer Feedback thing rolled up.
I repeated the search several times and then additional results rolled up? Well it appears that you need to be below that new box at the top of the screen, if you are above it or over the scroll bar, you are led to believe there is only ONE result. Apparently some of you see a demarkation where this area begins. Heck you even see button shapes around the filter words COLLECTION SEX RACE .... The only reason I know these are there is I happened to view my monitor from about a 22degree sharp angle and could see a variation of color. Try as I might I couldn't adjust the brightness and contrast to reveal these straight on. When I revealed this to the others, they were just as surprised as I was. Please oh please get some seniors in to give you an example of just how difficult subtle can be. Had that first result been a death in 2011 we would have given up!
Work with your designers and pick some colors that can be seen.
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