Search Problems
There is continual problem with FamilySearch "Search". It no longer is reliable as it once was.
Here is an example:
- Search for a place only in Historical Records. In this case Kent England (match exactly).
- Result seems to be for Kent and 14 million records.
- Click on Collections to narrow down search and you get everything but "Kent"
- See attachment
This problem is consistently across all filter links at the top... click on births, you get census or marriages, or...anything but births.
FamilySearch Search used to be the best, but now difficult to get reliable results. Most researchers that I know go to Ancestry first now.
Answers
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Try narrowing your search on the front end. If you're searching for records in England, choose England before you add any details.
Then you won't have to wade through records for the USA, Canada, or anywhere else other than England.
On the next screen, enter the person's name and maybe a place and type of record.
You'll have far fewer records to wade through.
Now that FamilySearch has SO many records, I find it almost always better to narrow to a country or even a specific collection from that country.
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In the part of the world where my ancestors lived, the records are nearly all on FamilySearch (that is, searching on Ancestry is not a useful option), but searching by placename is simply no longer functional here. I blame autostandardization: it rendered the place data untrustworthy on all of the older indexes, and has caused many of the newer indexes to stop at the country in the placename field -- if there even is a placename field.
Consequently, I have very little experience with entering placenames into Search. I sometimes use the place filters, but often only to the first level, more as a "record type" filter than as an actual place filter. (Filtering for birthplace = Continental Europe weeds out the zero-information results where the name I searched for appears as a parent or other non-principal.)
I have not experienced the phenomenon you describe of wanting births and getting filter bubbles for everything but births. I do, however, concur that filtering by collection "after the fact" can be a highly frustrating endeavor. I suggest you avoid it as much as possible by using the Search - Records landing page's "Find a Collection" section. No, this does not actually constrain you to re-doing the search in each possibly-relevant collection: you can add collections to your results page using the Collection filter, just like you would with a "global" starting point. The collection filter pane does offer a search field with which you can narrow the list. You could enter "Kent", for example, to more easily get to "England, Kent, Canterbury Parish Registers, 1538-1986". (Of course, the list will also include a bunch of Kentucky collections, but you can simply scroll past those.)
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