We have temporarily restricted the search facilities available at launch to allow a greater number of searches to take place at the same time. As soon as we can, we will ‘unlock’ the search feature to allow you to search much more flexibly and find those elusive ancestors. Here are the main features to be unlocked.

1. You will be able to perform a person search without the need for a surname, allowing you to find ancestors where you are unsure of the surname or to perform broader searches (finding all tram drivers within Manchester for example)
2. You will be able to perform ‘wildcard’ searches. This is where you can search using only part of a word if you are unsure of a spelling for examaple “an*t*” will find Anthony, Annette, Antony, Anita and many more variations
3. You will be able to perform ‘variant’ searches - this finds variants of first names and surnames. A variant search for Elizabeth would find you Liz, Eliza, Liza, Betty, Betsy, Beth and more
4. You will be able to perform an address search without the need for a street name allowing much more flexibility
5. You will be able to search date fields with a wider variation in date - for example birth year will allow to to search 5 years in either direction instead of the current 2 years

Tags: Search

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Product, Search, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.