more issues with multiple search terms

jello234

I found as I added more terms to a query, I lost results for the initial focus of my search:

 silas snyder" +"perry county" with limiter of Pennsylvania returned 17,794 results.

 

Since many of the first results were actually indexes, I thought I’d get rid of that term:

"silas snyder" +"perry county" -index

 

It got it down to 13,754 results, but now I have no readily observable “silas snyder” results. I tried moving “silas snyder” to the “add ancestor information. No difference.

 

HOWEVER, evidence now that the + signs are not providing a true “and” function. When I searched on just “silas snyder” with limiter Pennsylvania, I got just 91 results. That said, the majority of the search results -after the first few results- are still just pointers to the indexes, rather than the actual document records (deeds, wills) themselves.

 

Another example of skewed search results:

"george snyder" +"perry, pennsylvania"

                 Gave me just one record that was applicable. The rest were either not in perry county or were just pointers to a roll of microfilm where I can only assume that somewhere in that roll is a reference to George Snyder.

 

RobertWessel

@jello234

You are correct in that using the + symbol is not the same as AND in a Boolean search. You are better off searching for the name and then filtering the results using the filter buttons.