How does Family Search treat Birth Dates?

EmBanks

I include a birth date of 1848 on the Merchant Navy search and get a 2 page response from 1700s to 1800s BUT nothing close to 1840s.

dontiknowyou

FamilySearch treats dates loosely, and when there is no exact match fills in Search results with approximate matches.

Paul W

@EmBanks

I tried this out using the example of a "John Smith" (date of birth 1848) who might be found in the Merchant Seaman Records collection for the UK. Without checking the "Exact" fields I received 2,768 results (different years), in seemingly random order. Unfortunately, checking on a birth date alone produces no results - one has to include a place name, too. However, I found nothing for 1848 (for a John Smith) in using any search method, so tried another way. I removed the first name and unchecked the box alongside (you must do this if a field is empty). This produced just the one result for a (Robert) Smith born in (Norfolk) England in 1848. This shows that (using the required criteria - in this case: last name, year and place of birth, all checked as "exact") results can be narrowed down. In your example, maybe there is just nobody by that name / year of birth included in the database concerned.

See https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&q.birthLikeDate.from=1848&q.birthLikeDate.to=1848&q.birthLikePlace=england&q.birthLikePlace.exact=on&q.surname=smith&q.surname.exact=on&f.collectionId=1762440 for how I produced the result detailed above.