Why have England Marriage search results on both the website and the App changed?

kendoughty

I have reported this to Support but they asked me to mention it here.

The England and Wales Marriage Registration Index search on Familysearch is one of its most important and useful features.

The General Register Office website, gro.gov.uk not only has large sections of Index years missing on its website, it expects anyone ordering a marriage certificate for research to know both party's names and Index reference details before paying a fee for a paper certificate to be sent.

The only place you could see this information, including the missing Index sections, free, and on one page was Familysearch!

You could also search for a person with a possible Spouse's name and instantly see if it existed in the results.

This was, until they made the typeface on the Web and App larger!

Whereas, the search result used to show all possible Spouses, it now shows only one, which can be of the same gender.

This has reduced its usefulness drastically. I am sure it is not due to Licensing etc., but just an unforeseen adverse consequence of work done to increase typeface size.

Something needs to be done to rectify this.

Picture 1. The New Look transcript. Only one spouse shown. Less information!

Picture 2. The Old style transcript. Full useful research information.

Please note, if you go into previously attached Marriage Index transcript images they will show the old version.

Adrian Bruce1

@kendoughty said "... The only place you could see this information, including the missing Index sections, free, and on one page was Familysearch! ..."

Err - no. The stalwart for free access to England & Wales BMD indexes is https://www.freebmd.org.uk/

Doing your enquiry on the exact name and year shows firstly

And then, selecting "367" you see all 4 people entered on that page:

This gives you the Quarter, Year, Volume and Page references you need to order the certificate from the GRO site.

I'm not sure of the complete coverage for searching - it's mentioned on the site but it's wider than the GRO site which is only partial because that's when the money ran out.

kendoughty

Yes, when you have both names, but not so easy if you only have one as you have to do individual searches before and then check each one out in the way you show.