All Collections search giving less results than Records search for a specific Collection

MandyShaw1

Here's just one example of several I have found.

If I do a basic search for surname=Tinkham on All Collections and then filter to England, Yorkshire, Parish Registers, 1538-2016, I get 37 results.

If I do the same on a Records search, I get 41 (and if I export, I also get 41).

I cannot see why on earth this would be - any ideas?

(The mysterious thing is that the overall total of records for surname=Tinkham has the same value for both types of search (88,533 today - although the collection level numbers listed by All Collections total to only 86,438).)

Thanks.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

The name matching between the two search functions appears to be non-equivalent: the very first result in Search - Records, a George Wilfred Tingham, is nowhere to be seen on the All Collections results list.

(I counted: it took thirteen iterations of more-and-scroll to get to England-Yorkshire on the All Collections filter list. There has got to be a better way. I mean, can you imagine trying to find something in Zimbabwe this way?)

Paul W

I'm getting 52 results, making an "Exact" search on instances of the surname Tinkham in the county of Yorkshire - see https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&q.anyPlace=Yorkshire%2C%20England&q.anyPlace.exact=on&q.surname=tinkham&q.surname.exact=on. Four of the results are for Devon, however - having no mention of Yorkshire, so I don't know how they got there!

Without "Exact" checked for the surname I get 151 results: https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&q.anyPlace=Yorkshire%2C%20England%2C%20United%20Kingdom&q.anyPlace.exact=on&q.surname=tinkham

If I do the same search within the England, Yorkshire, Parish Registers, 1538-2016 collection I actually get NIL results - but do get 41 if I uncheck the "Exact" box. However, all those results are "variants" of the Tinkham surname. (See https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&q.surname=tinkham&f.collectionId=4439317).

I think you will need to post the URLs, which are producing such results, here. Perhaps you are not exactly comparing "like with like". In any case, you should naturally expect to see more results when searching outside a collection that is limited to christenings, marriages and burials within the county - when a "general" search should take in all kinds of other records (civil, immigration, military, etc.).

MandyShaw1

Thanks v much Julia.

One helpful trick on All Collections is, choose (e.g.) Birth, Marriage & Death, search in browser for See More, and you can just keep clicking on the See More text (no scrolling needed) till the collection you want pops up. (This is why I have been making use of All Collections in the first place, I find it a far quicker way of identifying the specific collections relevant to a particular search than the Records equivalent.)

I think you are right about the different name matching algorithms. Some of the differences are far wider than my previous example, e.g. Netherlands, Archival Indexes, Vital Records, 1600-2000: 80 in All Collections, 928 in Records.

Maybe the 88,533 overall total is in fact just pulled across from the Records search and doesn't reflect anything else shown on the All Collections screen.

MandyShaw1

Thanks v much Paul - I am not after exact searches, I work by doing as basic a search as I can and then exporting the results, usually at collection level, for detailed analysis in SQL. ('Tinkham' has loads of variant spellings.)

URL for Records (41): https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?f.collectionId=4439317&q.surname=tinkham

URL for All Collections (37): https://www.familysearch.org/search/all-collections/results/?q.surname=tinkham&count=20&offset=0&searchType=records&c.collectionId=on&m.facetNestCollectionInCategory=on&c.collectionType=on&f.collectionType=6&f.collectionId=4439317

MandyShaw1

P.S. I have just tried stripping down the All Collections URL as follows: https://www.familysearch.org/search/all-collections/results/?q.surname=tinkham&count=20&offset=0&searchType=records&c.collectionId=on&f.collectionId=4439317

Eureka, 41 results.

So I guess it's not the name matching but something about the collection type.

(Incidentally, I tried adding Type criteria of Births/Baptisms/Christenings/Marriages/Deaths in Records and I still got 41... The type label on this collection is 'http://gedcomx.org/Vital'.)

MandyShaw1

The plot thickens.

If I do a search for Sarah Eddy, exact on both given name and surname, Records gives me 2,386 at this URL: https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=100&q.givenName=sarah&q.givenName.exact=on&q.surname=eddy&q.surname.exact=on, while All Collections gives me 570,557 here: https://www.familysearch.org/search/all-collections/results/?q.givenName=sarah&q.surname=eddy&q.givenName.exact=on&q.surname.exact=on&count=20&offset=0

With Exact switched off, All Collections gives 1,292,613 here: https://www.familysearch.org/search/all-collections/results/?q.surname=eddy&q.givenName=sarah&count=20&offset=0, while Records gives 90,719 here: https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=100&q.givenName=sarah&q.surname=eddy

If I do a Records search just on the Eddy surname, https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=100&q.surname=eddy, with no Sarah and no Exact, the 1,292,613 comes up. And if I do this same search on All Collections, https://www.familysearch.org/search/all-collections/results/?q.surname=eddy&count=20&offset=0, I get that same value.

Repeating this exercise with Exact switched on, All Collections, https://www.familysearch.org/search/all-collections/results/?q.surname=eddy&count=20&offset=0&q.surname.exact=on, gives me 570,557, and Records, https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=100&q.surname=eddy&q.surname.exact=on, the same.

So, All Collections is ignoring the given name totally when showing record counts (although it does take it into account when sorting the results, so it definitely isn't ignoring it completely).

Surely this makes no sense?

MandyShaw1

Sorry to witter on about this but others may perhaps find it useful.

I have discovered the silver bullet that makes All Collections behave like Records in relation to given names, it is the .require modifier, e.g. https://www.familysearch.org/search/all-collections/results/?q.givenName=sar%2A&q.givenName.exact=on&q.givenName.require=on&q.surname=eddy&count=20&offset=0.

I found mention of this when googling the FS Search API.

Slightly puzzled as to why you would need to add .require on top of .exact, but there we are. Apparently .require is automatically on for surnames, which explains a great deal.