New search delineators not helpful
I use this site a lot for deed research in New York, not only in my county, but also other counties as well. I enjoyed being able to quickly narrow down which county I wanted, and which decade I was looking for; or try different decades or different counties without having to change all the parameters.
I tried putting in say "1790-1850" to get only early records, and I was still getting results for 1850 and above. Also, if I try to narrow it down to which county or name I want specifically, I end up with 0 results, and I know the record exists because I found the record by looking in the index book manually.
I get that the developers trying to make it "new user" friendly, but the new search functionality is not helpful at all.
Answers
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You may want to try filtering by Collection and Date Range rather than using 'Any' Life Event - while still specifying Location - United States, New York:
As mentioned in the article: https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/advanced-strategies-searching-records Exact Date ranges are not available - but these filters might help you get closer (sorry the screenshot may take a while - but just indicates OTHER YEAR (RANGE) filter options which show 10 Results in 1700 for Benjamin William* - using the above Search URL)
I hope this helps find Results you are after.
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In my experience, the new interface will grudgingly obey you about names, but nothing you do with the search parameters will make it do anything more with dates than to take them vaguely under advisement. (As in, "event occurred in the past three centuries or so" is "good enough".) I think they must've done something with the weighting/scoring of date fields.
As genthusiast said, you have to use the filters to get any sort of sanity in the dates -- but of course in the new interface, the filters have long scrolled well off your screen if you're looking at anything other than the first one-and-a-half results. Also, God help you if the date range you need goes from mid-decade to mid-decade. You'll have to do it in pieces, ignoring the half-decades on either side as best you can. Also, keep in mind that if you tweak the parameters such that your filters result in no matches, you'll get a "no results" error page -- on which the filter controls are entirely missing. In other words, you'll be unable to remove the filters that are resulting in no matches. You'll have to either use your browser's "back" button and remove the filters before re-entering your parameter changes (if you can remember them!), or you'll have to give up and start completely over (by going to Search - Records; the "reset all" button is lying -- it does bubkus to filters).
(No, I do not like any aspect of the new interface. Gee, how could you even tell.)
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The image is not loading for me at all. Where do I find "Other Year (Range)"? I checked out the article you shared, but it did not provide information I was already not aware of.
If I check the box for Exact, Cayuga County, I get zero results, and as you can see in the image I shared, there are results in Cayuga County for him.
Please bring back the left side drop down tab options to view all of what databases are available by state, and narrow down options by county and decade!
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@Jessica Armstrong, asking for an exact match to "Cayuga County" returns no results because FS doesn't use designators like "county" in placenames. But nothing that an exact match can apply to is a filter; exact matching is for search parameters. (The new interface is highly confusing: it can display both search parameters and filters identically, as blue bubbles, but they're entered completely differently, and affect totally opposite ends of the process.)
The initial Search - Records landing page doesn't have filter controls on it anywhere. This is not new to this interface; it is "structural": filters apply after a search has been performed, so there's no point in offering them beforehand.
Once you have performed a search, you get an elusive row of gray bubbles above the topmost search result. (If you scroll down to look at your second or third result, they've already scrolled off the screen.) These are your potential filters. Most of them open a popup in the middle of the screen, and many of them have two sections (tabs, kind of), from which you can choose gray bubbles in order to get more gray bubbles to choose from, and then eventually apply your choices with the blue button at the bottom of the popup.
The exception to popup-in-the-middle is filtering by collection: that bubble opens a pane at the right (making the "more options" search pane inaccessible, if you had it open). It has a search box now, but still cannot be sorted; it displays in groups by type, and then in descending order of hits. (I cannot imagine a less useful arrangement.)
Once you apply a filter, it displays as a blue bubble above the search results. If you close More Options, then your search parameters that aren't "First Names, Last Names, (Any) Place, (Any) Year" are also displayed as blue bubbles above the search results. The only difference is that the former scroll off the screen every chance they get, while the latter stay put.
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