www.familysearch.org

Dennis J Yancey

www.familysearch.org

SEARCHING FAMILYSEARCH MEMORIES

 

click "expand post"

 

Massive family image/document databases like those maintained by FamilySearch.org or Ancestry.com can be a wealth of high value family information (especially for those doing "One Name Studies")

 

But doing a compound search (more than one search term) is almost a requirement to be able to find anything specific.

 

Compound logic in FS (at the moment) doesn't always work as you would expect. You are forced to use " + " operators on each term.

 

At this page: https://www.familysearch.org/photos/find

 

Here are some searches you might be interested in .

( Replace the word "Surname" with your own surname of interest. Do not leave any space after the plus sign )

 

+Surname +Bible

+Surname +sampler

+Surname +photo

+Surname +probate

+Surname +State (replace state with actual state name)

+Surname +wedding

+Surname +certificate +baptism

+Surname +church

+Surname +

 

try some of your own searches

let me know what surprises you find.

 

There are literally Millions of items (maybe billions)?

 

do YOU have images to upload? need help because you are technically challenged and don't know how to upload them?? feel free to ask me.

Do you all know - you can actually upload hundred of images at a single pass. and you don't have to do it one by one.

 

Note that you can also now search by TOPIC TAG.

BUT - so few items have topic tags (relative to the millions that exist) that text searching is still the best way.

 

You can also do Image searching on Ancestry. Even if you dont have an account.

 

Here is a sample search at ANCESTRY

 

https://www.ancestry.com/search/?name=_yancey&keyword=bible&types=p

 

note the terms yancey and bible embedded in the link

you can replace such terms with your own name and keyword - without changing anything else in the link.

 

note that you will freely see the "thumbnail" images - but to see the high definition full image at Ancestry - you will need a valid account.

 

@Yancey/Yancy Family Genealogy​ 

@Nanney Family Genealogy​ 

@Cass / Case Family Group​ 

@Nuckolls Family Genealogy​ 

@Kavanaugh Family Genealogy​ 

@Justiss/Justice Family Genealogy​ 

@Ansley Family Genealogy​ 

@Ancestor Treasures​ 

@FamilySearch Tips and Tricks​ 

@Family History Research​ 

@Roger Allen Bell​ 

BradNash

Great writeup! Thanks. I wanted to do: Surname in West Virginia, and found that adding apostrophes instead of quotation marks worked well so: Surname +'West Virginia'

Dennis J Yancey

Quotes worked just fine with me

here is what I used for a search and it seemed to work just fine for me (no apostrophe or single quote)

+smith +"west virginia"

 

also it is important to really understand what FS is doing when it executes a search and how much "intelligence" (or lack there of) - the search routine really has. If you do the above search - it is looks for the word "West Virginia" in like the title, or description etc. But if "West Virginia" was not in what the submitter typed in - it wont be smart enough to find items that indeed could be related to West Virginia. This applies to just about any search engine. Be careful in assuming search engine intelligence that isnt there.

so be careful what terms you use and try various alternate terms - and try to focus on terms that would be the most likely for someone to actually type in when they submitted the item.

This is also why one should put some good thought into title and descriptions on submitted items.

Brad York

Do you know of a way NOT to find a given name, e.g. my Surname is York. I would like to eliminate all New York incidents in a search. If I search +York +photo I will get hundreds of results that show New York and not the Surname York.

Dennis J Yancey

[be sure to click "expand post" ]

It appears as if YORK is a particularly very difficult surname to search on using search engines that don't have surname parameters.

 

usually to accomplish what you desire - you would do a search like the following

(using the minus sign)

+"York Family" -"New York"

 

However FamilySearch Memories seems to perform especially bad - when using multiple words within quotes

and with the above search it just seems to return nothing - even though you would think it would have items out there that would match.

You can try the same search on Google - and get sub second response - which is amazing.

 

some possible alternatives in FS include:

 

+York -New

+York +Family

+"York Family"

This is another reason I wish FS would go through the effort of adding Surname Topic Tags - for the millions of records that already exist - and even automatically create surname topic tags when a new item is tagged to a person.

so that we could more easily isolate just the items linked to a person with surname X

 

@Mark Mitchell​ 

Mark E. Mitchell

Dennis, please note I have passed this thread on to the Product Manager for Memories.

Dennis J Yancey

Thanks

feedback like this is very much appreciated.

we like to know when our comments are at least shared with managers and engineers

even if the change is not accepted or made - at least we know our voice was heard.