Google search claims to be Family Search
I recently did a general internet search on a deceased family matter and it came back with a link indicating it was from Family Search, but some of the information it listed was incorrect. I contacted Family Search and was told that the incorrect information was not in Family Search and that it appears that Google added information not listed in Family Search.
Has anyone seen this happen before.?
Answers
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I'm not sure I have enough information to explain it, but I'll do my best.
Google does not enter any information on its own, so it is not the culprit. I can think of three scenarios:
The most likely is that there is a duplicate on FamilySearch that the duplicate-finding algorithm didn't find, but Google found instead of the correct profile. So FamilySearch Tech Support would have looked at the person page you directed them to, but since that wouldn't be the place Google was pulling from, they would find nothing wrong.
There may also be a different person with similar information. I certainly know that the three Thomas Graves' in Massachusetts in the late 1500s have given me and several others a lot of grief when trying to sort out the records. Once you get past the information I already gave, they were clearly three completely different people. That's probably an outlier scenario though.
Another option is that another site, separate from FamilySearch, cited FamilySearch as a source, and then the information on FamilySearch was changed. The other site would have still contained the old information and the citation.
The last option I thought of is that another person noticed just after you did and fixed the information before FamilySearch saw it. This one is incredibly unlikely, but I thought of it, so here it is. 🤷♂️
I can't guarantee that any of these are the true answer, but I hope I helped in some way.
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If the beginning of the URL is ancestors.familysearch.org, then yes it is coming from FamilySearch and it is refreshed every couple of weeks. So if changes were recently made on the FamilySearch Tree, then they will be updated in a manual refresh of those pages. They are not automatically updated. If the person who finds the page via Google wants more information about the person they can sign in to a FamilySearch account and view the person's detail page which will give them the most up-to-date information. (There is a link to this at the top of each Ancestor Discovery Page.
Here is a link to a FamilySearch Blog article that explains how these Ancestor Discovery Pages function: https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/new-ancestor-discovery-pages-provide-a-rich-engaging-family-history-experience
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