Limiting date range in a search

LegacyUser

Leonard Poulsen said: When will it be possible to truly limit a search to specific date range in a category of choice i.e. marriage date, birth date, residence date, etc. I know there are times when we shouldn't do that but when you are flooded with results it's a necessity. I shouldn't have to export data to a spreadsheet and then filter there. There is no capability to stay within an exact date range.

LegacyUser

Stewart Millar said: When you put in a marriage or birth date range - the results of that date range will be listed at the top of the results list . . . so the search may return 10,000 results - but the leading results in the list will give you those matching the date range . . . with which you only need to inspect the list - from the top - until the dates deviate from the date range.

LegacyUser

Leonard Poulsen said: That's not correct and the results are not in order of date either

LegacyUser

Juli said: Stewart's statement is only correct if date is the only parameter being searched on, which is not allowed, or if the date is the only parameter with any variation in match score -- that is, if every name and place matches the search terms to exactly the same degree. That basically never happens. Instead, the results are ordered according to how well they match all of the search terms. In my experience, the ordering is strongly weighted in favor of the name, meaning that a record that matches the name exactly but has the wrong date is likely to be listed before a record that has the right date but not quite the same name.

You can work around some of the search's shortcomings using the filters, but there are no exact year filters -- if you need things between, say, 1878 and 1883, you're SOL.

LegacyUser

Leonard Poulsen said: I agree. That's why I would like a software enhancement.

LegacyUser

Paul said: I generally find I'm able to get around the problem by using the filters provided. Okay, I've had to specify "England" as a place name in the example shown, but checking the "Type" box (see bottom left of screen) has cut out the census and immigration results I had returned in my initial search. If you do want these, too, for (say) a Charles Wrightson born in this period, then don't filter on "Type".

Even FamilySearch employees commenting on this forum have agreed that searching on date is not too easy, but I have found there are workarounds to make for quite acceptable results.

One important thing is to only search on one "vitals" item at a time, however. For example, make sure no marriage data is included on the Search page if you want just birth/christening results. If you make a search from the "person page" (via the FamilySearch icon) you will need to remove any marriage and death detail carried across, or you will get thousands of results. Oh, and check the "Exact match" boxes, too, if you are sure of the name spelling (otherwise, use wildcards).

Note the difference in the number of results produced in using different search methods - including filtering and "exact match" options:

LegacyUser

Stewart Millar said: In using the "Search" feature - you need to edit the search criteria to the particular type of record you are searching for obtaining more specific results.

First example:


.. . . . has a mix of all record types - birth, marriage, death etc.

Second example:


having deleted the search criteria for marriage and death data - we are left with birth (& christening) data - within the date parameters specified - but still a significant quantity.

Third example:


Here the location has been restricted to a specific Country and County - giving 16 results - within the date parameters specified.

LegacyUser

Leonard Poulsen said: Thanks for all of the replies. I've actually done most if not all of the things that have been recommended up to this point and been quite successful. HOWEVER a software enhancement to improve the search engine is in order (in my opinion) and since Family Search has asked for ideas this is one I would like to submit. This is especially true when you have a wife's first name but not her last. Then you need all the help you can get in a robust search engine. The only thing that works better is inspiration.

Thanks again for all the tips!!!!!!!!!!

Elisabeth von Bloedau

https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/124149#Comment_124149

Absolutely agree. I have found matches to "exact" searches, tens of pages into the provided lists. The algorithm needs serious tweaking, and the concept of "exact" (or a range, esp. of dates) needs to be applied to search results.

OKaren

These comments are over 2 years old. I also would like to see FamilySearch allow a button to strictly limit certain date ranges IN ascending ORDER, simply because I've done [certain date] "forward" and gotten as many of the relatives as I can find so far. As the time goes further back, I'd like to check those returned results for a similarity to the people I already have in my list. It's impossible to do if I see my work in the list and wading through the few people with records who might be parents or grandparents of my latest project.

Naturally, there are more people with no homes (unclaimed for personal trees) than trees in the Family Search records, & I have trouble sorting through due to name similarities or areas that I don't specify.

Limiting to area is good, but adding a limit to "exact date range," OR "exclude dates after" or region (ie. "Northeast United States" or "Plains United States") request COULD make my search easier to follow.

Thank you.

Cheryl Kotecki

I'd like to reinforce again the issue raised in this more than two-year-old suggestion.

I'm searching a specific data set which like most data sets is location-based. However, since the precise location of the event was not indexed, I'm running into this same issue of dates not being limited by the search, when clearly the date was indexed and it's the only way to limit my search on a common name/surname combination. (The data set I'm searching for my example is "Germany, Prussia, Posen, Catholic and Lutheran Church Records, 1430-1998 Sieburczyn, Burzyn, Łomza, Russia-Poland" - a large data set.)

I specify record type, I specify that the name I have entered be the principal, and with the name being common, I put a fairly short year range in the search engine, e.g. 1773-1777 around what I believe to be the year of the event. I'm getting results where the event took place in the 1820's. The second one on the list of 262 results was in 1829, even though there are more exact name match results that fit my 1773-1777 limited range after that 1829 record. So the out-of-range records are mixed up with other more recent records that are more likely relevant.

If the search engine just can't work on the indexed data set with the date limit, there should be a way to sort in date order so I could at least focus on the results I'm interested without having to page through a very long list of mostly irrelevant results. This would really help because a result with just a match on the first initial of the first name, which according to the responses here, might be on a later page of results, is going to be more relevant to me than a full name match where the event took place more than 50 years after what I'm looking for did.

Cheryl Kotecki

Julia Szent-Györgyi

@Cheryl Kotecki, the search parameters (inputs) are treated as a logical "or", not "and". In other words, a search for Johann Schmidt born between 1773 and 1777 is a match to Johann Schmidt born in 1820, because the name matches exactly (and the name is given a lot more weight than the birthdate). Meanwhile, Hans Schmidt born in 1775 may be way down the list somewhere, because his name isn't as good a match.

To actually limit your results to a particular timeframe or place, you need to use filters. These only go down to the decade, and are subject to all of the placename errors introduced by autostandardization, but they will weed out the results that only match the other parameters of your search.