Exact match check boxes removed

LegacyUser

Paul said: Just noticed the removal of above from https://www.familysearch.org/search/. Is this deliberate or is there a bug?

See example at https://www.familysearch.org/search/r...

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I suspect this is the result of complaints that exact match for dates never worked the way we users expected them. The exact match was only for names and the new layout shows that.

That's my guess on the situation.

LegacyUser

Lundgren said: Thank you for your feedback! The exact boxes are still there. You just need to turn them on now to use them.

The reason for the change is they have been a stumbling block for new users for quite some time.

A very common new user behavior is to fill all the boxes with all the information the user knows, and then check the exact boxes because they know that they typed in is exactly correct. This tends to cause them to find nothing.

If you look lower down on the form you will find a control to enable the boxes.

There is no change to the behavior of the buttons.

Not all users are seeing this change, we are testing the UI change still.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The Match All Terms Exactly was there previously. It still did not work well when dates were specified in the search. This has been brought up a number of times.

All clicking on Match All Terms Exactly does is to turn on all the exact check boxes. There is still no match exactly checkbox that is "turned on" for the dates.

Windows 10, Chrome (current version).

Before:

After:

LegacyUser

Lundgren said: Agreed.

The "match all terms exactly" could have read: "Enable Exact check boxes where they are supported, which excludes dates, and doesn't really mean exact for places, more like narrow, and there are also some exceptions in names where it isn't exactly exact either"

But that is a bit verbose, and probably would have been difficult to translate. (That was meant as a joke.)

That box will change for everyone eventually if the change passes muster.

(Your images above appear to be identical other than the checked boxes, you aren't seeing the new feature.)

LegacyUser

Lundgren said: New box unchecked on main search screen:



New box checked:

LegacyUser

Paul said: Thanks for your prompt response, Lundgren. I sincerely hope the "Exact Searching" option (that I carelessly missed!) will be retained for the foreseeable future. True, it isn't always a great help, but in certain circumstances the number of results are considerably reduced and it can be of considerable help, I can assure you.

This is one feature that I find (whatever its shortcomings) far outperforms the search routines provided by Ancestry and Find My Past, so PLEASE don't drop the (Exact Searching) option any time soon!