Strict adherence to specified search time range

LegacyUser

John Chandler said: It would be much better if searches adhered strictly to whatever time ranges were specified by the user. There are many situations (such as searches involving the surname SMITH) when the user is inundated with extra, undesired search hits that make it entirely impractical to look for the desired entry or entries.

LegacyUser

Lundgren said: Thank you for your input!

As you have pointed out, the date ranges in the upper left are not filters. They impact the records that are returned and the order they are returned.

(A record that matches the dates provided will come back sooner than a record with the exact same information that does not match the dates provided.)

You can filter the records down to a desired decade by using the filters in the bottom left of the page on the website. You cannot filter more narrowly than a decade.

LegacyUser

Juli said: A decade is useless in general, not just for Smith. For one thing, uncertainty doesn't come in handy multiples of ten: what if the range is 1837 to 1842? The search used to behave reasonably: if you told it two dates, then all of the results above the "may be of interest" bar were between those two dates. Now it just willfully ignores both dates.

LegacyUser

Lundgren said: The blue/brown lines were removed because they were inconsistent.

If you look at the exported results there is a score. That score can only be used to sort the results. It is not a direct indicator of the value of the results. Just a number for one record relative to the other results in the search.

The lines were placed in the UI using a fixed number with no consideration to the search parameters or the results. There were frequently results below the lines that were valuable.

The behavior of the dates in the search engine has not changed.

We do have work on the backlog to change the way dates work, it will be prioritized against our other work.