Suggestions for "Show Exact Search"
1) In search criteria, near the bottom, there is a slider option to "Show Exact Search". It would be better to eliminate this option and defaulted to "on". The check boxes to "Show Exact" should always be visible with a small popup to help new users know how to use "Show Exact".
2) "Show Exact" is only available for names and places. It would help if "Show Exact" also applied to dates. Currently, if I enter a date range, I get results that are way beyond reason. In many cases, the search result is more than 20 years outside of the birth year range and obviously not the person. This could result in errors! This also wastes valuable time that could be used doing actual research rather than scanning invalid records. If I want to ensure that the only results I see are within the range I specify, then I should be able to "check" the "Show Exact" box next the date range.
New users
Comments
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Over the years, since the introduction of the "Exact" search option, the engineers appear to have constantly tinkered with the code and, consequently, how the meaning of "exact" is being applied in practice.
Many examples have been provided here to illustrate how those thousands of unwanted results can be eliminated, but - just when I feel sure I have cracked a way of removing (well, almost) all those irrelevant (to my search) returns - I, too, find I can receive far more results than I bargained for!
For a while, it seemed we could check "exact" against the Place fields and still get results when no place was entered - just the date range. I tried this just now and the first two attempts led to the "tick" being removed as I clicked on "Search". It did remain on the third attempt, but to no "advantage", as the results themselves remained exactly as before!
However, if you view my search at https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&q.birthLikeDate.from=1825&q.birthLikeDate.to=1845&q.birthLikePlace=Durham%2C%20England%2C%20United%20Kingdom&q.birthLikePlace.exact=on&q.givenName=john&q.givenName.exact=on&q.surname=wrightson&q.surname.exact=on you will see when I added a Birth Place, I got 26 results, all of which conformed to my stipulation of a birth at Durham within the inputted time period.
However, when I searched on Residence Place for the 1841-1861 (census) period, things started off well enough - all results relating to 1841-61 census records for individuals who resided in Durham - but then the results suddenly switched to including Yorkshire marriages well outside the date range. (And even a 1917 Military Service record at the end of the list!)
So, even if one could search purely on a date range, there is no guarantee the results would match the range of dates entered, given the inconsistency in how the current interpretation of "exact" is being applied in our searches.
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Yes, as Paul says, FS's algorithms often have us concluding that the results may be exact, but only for some value of "exact" that none of us are familiar with. However, given that autostandardization has rendered placename fields nonfunctional in FS's entire database anyway, I haven't been using the checkboxes much lately.
To actually restrict a search to a date or date range, you have to use the date filters -- which only go down to the numeric decade. This means that if you're looking for an event that occurred somewhere around 1849-1850, say, then you'll need to do the filtering twice, once for the 1840s, and once for the 1850s.
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