Why are results so far from what is asked?
I was searching for a marriage record from 1983, and got results from 2010 to 1895. If they don't have it, fine, but why waste my time with "results" so far off?
Answers
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If you could provide a URL or screenshot, to show details of the search criteria you applied, you might get help regarding improved strategies for narrowing down your results, so they are more in line with your expectations.
In the example below, you can see I searched for any John Smith married in London, England in 1983 and got two results, both proving an exact match.
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Yes, it is critical to get the right search parameters and these are not always obvious. Hence @Paul W's request to provide us with information about what you entered.
I just tried to find my parents' marriage and was pleasantly surprised to get the exact entries (there are two index entries per marriage for England & Wales civil registrations). Without doing multiple checks on various items, I suspect that two inputs were crucial:
Record Type = Marriage
Principal on Record = Yes
With those settings, alongside the names of both parties and the (single) year in question, I got the correct marriage and only that. I didn't set any items to "Match Exactly".
Having said that, if I entered a range for the year, it seemed to throw up some oddities both before and after the range. (There doesn't appear to be an exact matching facility for the date. No idea why).
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