Duplicate Genealogy Bank Record Hints

Emily Considine Krafjack

The other day, I added the Genealogy Bank Obit to a profile. The profile didn't seem to "adjust" and remove this particular hint. Today I'm on the profile again, expecting the hint to have been removed. Unfortunately, there are now 2 identical Genealogy hints for this exactly the same obit.

What should I do about this? Do I leave it alone? Do I post it again? Or do I click "Not a Match"?

Thank you!

Carla Tobler

@Emily Krafjack

Thank you for posting this question in the Community.

Here is an article from the Help Center about this very issue. There is some important and helpful information here.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/what-do-i-do-with-duplicate-record-hints-in-family-tree

Here is part of that article:

Please attach all record hints, even if they appear to be duplicates for the same individual. Do not mark them as "Not a Match."

If you look at each hint carefully, you usually discover differences.

Why duplicate record hints exist

Apparent duplicates can occur for many reasons:

• The record was indexed more than once.
• The event appears in more than one collection. For example, the same marriage record can appear in a county marriage collection and a state marriage collection.
• The record was filmed more than once.
• The collection itself contains duplicate records.

What to do about duplicate record hints

Look at the URL of each record hint. Each one should have a different and unique URL.

• If the apparent duplicate has a unique URL but is not about the person, mark it as Not a Match.
• If the apparent duplicate has a unique URL and is about the person, click Review and Attach as usual. Be aware that when you dismiss apparent duplicates, it can prevent the hinting system from finding record hints for the person in the future.
• If the apparent duplicate has the same URL as another record hint, please contact FamilySearch Support.

If the Genealogy Bank Obit. record hints you are referring to have the exact URL, please give us the ID# of the person in Family Tree and we will forward the information to our Specialty Department.

Best wishes!

Gordon Collett

To specifically address your question about Genealogy Bank obituaries, be aware that you will nearly always have multiple records with the same title. I have never found these to be duplicates. The reason they look the same when they really are different sources is that FamilySearch uses broad, generic titles for sources that are based on the record collection name, not the actual source. Also, Genealogy Bank transcribes and indexes all obituaries in a newspaper collection, not just some of them.

This results in your list of sources looking like this:

• Daniel John Smith, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014

Depending on your goals, available research time, and how detail oriented you are, you could edit and improve these titles to be:

• Daniel John Smith, Deseret News, July 20, 1981, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, Deseret News, July 21, 1981, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, Salt Lake Tribune, July 20, 1981, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, Salt Lake Tribune, July 21, 1981, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, Daily Herald, July 23, 1981, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014
• Daniel John Smith, Standard-Examiner, July 23, 1981, United States, GenealogyBank Obituaries, 1980-2014

With a quick glance at the FamilySearch source, these will all look the same because the same copy was used by all three newspapers. However, they are six distinct, different sources.

There are a couple of reasons for attaching all the sources. One, the number of days the obituary was published and the bigger variety of newspapers it ended up in can give an indication of the social position of the person. If you were related to President Ronald Regan and working on his record, you would have 177 copies of his obituary to attach, not just three.

But even more importantly, as the Help Center article alludes to, by whatever magic the Hinting systems uses, it includes information from all the FamillySearch system sources attached to a person and all the hints marked as not-a-match for that person to find more hints.

So if you have six obituary sources for Thomas Jones that all say he was born June 2, 1950, and attach all of them, when the Hint engine runs across another record for a Thomas Jones born June 2, 1950, it will give a higher score to the new hint, probably high enough to present it to you.

However, if you attach just one of those records, and mark the other five as not-a-match, then the Hint engine will do something along the lines of saying +1 -5 = -4 and lower the scoring on any sources it subsequently finds for a Thomas Jones born June 2, 1950 and may never give you another hint for your Thomas if it includes his birth date.

So do attach every correct hint.

Emily Considine Krafjack

Thanks for the great explanations! Very much appreciated!