Bug: No search results and "Consider adding a last name to avoid this message."

Anne986

Usually I can use a wildcard in the last name of a records search. However it is failing now with no results and the message, "Consider adding a last name to avoid this message." I deleted the web cookies but that did not help. Why is this occurring? Is there a work around? Thanks.

Example: (There should be plenty of results.)

Last Names: w* [war* also fails, but warhop does not]

Place: Wythe, Virginia, United States

Birth Year: 1770 to 1870

https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=100&q.anyPlace=Wythe%2C%20Virginia%2C%20United%20States&q.anyPlace.exact=on&q.birthLikeDate.from=1770&q.birthLikeDate.to=1870&q.surname=w%2A

Julia Szent-Györgyi

It gave me the "try again" message at first, but I clicked "reload" in my browser and got 14,496 results.

I get the "try again" message a lot. I make rude gestures and then click reload until it condescends to do the search.

It has happened that the search somehow got into a loop of "no results", even on searches that I had done a few minutes earlier with plenty of results. I ended up starting over on the Search - Records landing page, and then it worked. I think the bug is related to filters: when there are no results, it doesn't show the filters, so you can't turn them off.

Anne986

Julia,

Thank you very much for sharing your experience with this. I had tried a new search on the Search Records page without success. After reading your post, I tried to search again for war* and it gave results. Then I tried w* and got that last name message -oy!

Áine Ní Donnghaile

I do the same as Julia. When the search engine doesn't want to share, I mumble under my breath and hit reload/refresh until it complies.