Is Record Search broken again ?
The most frequent form of search that I use is the record search …https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/record/
… because it gives greater control over criteria and will accept a search that is very specific in all respects except that it has a blank surname. This to locate records with corruptions that are so far off that the built-in near miss function doesn't find them.
In recent times this search has often stopped working.
The 'All Collections' search will still work, but that will not allow the same flexibility and is not as user friendly.
Can someone please verify whether this search is actually working:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/record/results?count=20&m.defaultFacets=on&m.facetNestCollectionInCategory=on&m.queryRequireDefault=on&q.birthLikeDate.from=1820&q.birthLikeDate.to=1830&q.birthLikePlace=Connecticut%2C%20United%20States&q.givenName=James&q.recordCountry=United%20States&q.surname=Routledge
If it is working for you, then I'll try to work out what's going wrong inside my machine.
Answers
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I've been searching all day today, mostly using Chrome on Windows 10, with no problem.
Your search parameters, above, return 500 results.
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Thanks, Áine, I'll start tearing things open.
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Bizzarre ! It's started working again, and I haven't actually changed anything.
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The site has been a bit wonky tonight. Record searching has been fine, but catalog searches have been failing.
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The record search seems to have broken again. No results being returned for any search using the https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/record/results URL
I am trying to use the alternative "All Collections" search, but it is sadly very poor at getting good results. Either too many unrelated result (wrong county etc.) or zero results if I try to specify Exact with a wildcard.
If I specify Marriage as the type and the year as 1841 exact it returns results for Christenings and Birth Registrations for years after the marriage. Ludicrous ! *UPDATE* The Marriage Type Flag was not being set in the URL. If I manually edit the URL, then it only provides results for marriages. Awkward, but a workaround,
The "All Collections" search is not a workable substitute for the record search.
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@Re Searching I am baffled as to why you say search is not working. An exact search for marriages in 1841 returns only marriages in1841:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/record/results?count=20&f.recordType=1&q.marriageLikeDate.exact=on&q.marriageLikeDate.from=1841&q.marriageLikeDate.to=1841&q.surname=c%2A
Please send a URL of your search so we can understand the problem.
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@SerraNola Your search used the "Record" search that was broken earlier. The search that was returning results of the wrong type was the "All Collections" search https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/all-collections/
I only use the All Collections search when the Records search is not working because it is a lot more difficult to get good results.
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@Re Searching I don't think there are any serious researchers who use the search box on the home page. It is there for newcomers to try out FamilySearch.
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@SerraNola I'm not referring to the search box on the home page. I tried to explain at the beginning which variants search format was the topic.
What I call the "Record search" is the closest match the the "old" search, but with all the options now moved to the a side panel on the right, whereas the "old " search had it on the left. This search would normally be accessed using the "Records" option in the drop down menu of the top menu item "Search" on the home page. It's a lot quicker to just keep a bookmark of a previous result and go from there. These "Records" searches present the URL https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/record/ and have more versatile options compared with the "All Collections" search which present the URL https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/all-collections/
It seems that every so often, the mechanism behind this "Records" search gets its gears jammed and needs kicking to get it started again. It has happened enough times for me to question the integrity of my own machine, but by the time I have dug deep into investigation the search begins to work again. My own suspicion is that some connection to one of the third parties in the chain is the culprit, but I haven't yet been able to determine which.
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@Re Searching There are actually two different searches on the home page depending on what account you have. I didn't realize that until I looked at it with Incognito. The search I get returns "all collections" in the URL. https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/all-collections/results/?q.surname=partridge The other one returns https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/discovery/results
I'm sorry, I did misunderstand what search engine you used for your example. I agree the "All Collections" search is not a workable substitute for Record Search. I hope you are able to resolve your problems with Record Search and if not, let us know if we can help.
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Further: I've worked out that for some searches just changing the URL to substitute all-collections in place of record will get the search to work. PROVISO: all-collections does not allow a blank surname and the specification of a record set does not use the same switches so it's not really a good workaround.
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Further: The problem is with the scripts that pass the search string to Usabilla. Whenever this redirection switch is enabled the 'Record' search fails. I'm not going to lower my machine's security just to allow this to work.
However: I have been able to force the 'all-collections' search to work with a blank surname by trickery. The API refuses to accept a blank field, and hangs if you insert an asterisk as a wild card. I inserted a string of hyphens and it started producing results.
This will be sufficient in the meantime until Usabilla stops trying to snoop all the searches and the record search starts working again.
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@Re Searching The scripts that pass the search string to Usabilla allow engineers to uncover the user's problem in Feedback. Would you rather FamilySearch did away with Feedback? Also, it is still not clear why Record Search is not working for you.
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@SerraNola I understand the intent of involving a 3rd party to assist with compiling feedback and issues into a concise and constructive strategy for fixing problems. Unfortunately, common security measures are becoming far more adept at intercepting potentially harmful 3rd party interaction, and sometimes the 3rd (and 4th) party code is not updated as quickly as the security measures. I suspect that as protection measures update, then from time to time, the Usabilla or other 3rd (or 4th) party script that enables the interaction with Usabilla is seen as an undesirable interception and so the action is blocked. For me, this occurs sporadically, and often there are many days between occurences. I have been unable to clear the problem by logging out and restarting, or by clearing history and cache. I once beleived that what I call the Switch was reset after 24 hours, but since then I have found that the search would sometimes begin to work after an hour or so without having to clear anything or logout. Overall, I believe that I do can do nothing at my end, barring disabling the security measures, to prevent the issue. As I said in my earlier comment, now that I have discovered how to use the 'all-collections' search with a blank surname, and how to fix the issue with the search type selection not setting the correct value in the URL, I am more able to use this search API to continue until the 'record' search resumes without redirection.
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@Re Searching I appreciate your explanation. In case you can't tell, I'm not a techie person. I am learning much from the users here in Community who are. Thank you and I wish you well with your "fixes".
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