The first day: 3.4 million searches
The first day (midnight to midnight) of the release of the 1911 Census went very well - we served up 3.4 million searches and 17.4million pages to 645,000 visitors who made 827,000 visits between them .
Technically the site held up exceptionally well - we used only a fraction of the available capacity available on the servers, meaning that the site reponse was fast with few errors all day: it remains so into the second day.
Tags: performance, searches, site
January 14th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Sorry to say that “held-up” as far as I am concerned only reflects disappointment. Have been trying for 16 hours now to download but with the same response “temporary….” How long is temporary !!??
January 14th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
What does “Your comment is awaiting moderation” mean ?
January 14th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
I’m trying to access the census site and I just get an error.
Content Encoding Error
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.
* Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.
January 14th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I am still searching for frank wells born 1879 died 1951 in the boundary strreet estate warton house but in the 1901 census is living with his mother and brothers and sisters in DOVE ROW SHOREDITCH really HAGGERSTON then part of HACKNEY really but all the brothers and sisters had got married before the 1911 the mother died in 1905 they alllived for a time in PRITCHARD ROAD but I BELIEVE WHEN IT was pulled dopwn he moved to warton house have found him there with a A M WELLSin 1952 but do not believe he married
January 14th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I posted this fix yesterday.
I also had the encoding problems but have fixed them now.
The fix is for firefox
1) In the address bar type “about:config” (but without the inverted commas)
2) Tell it that you will be careful, Promise!!
3) In the filter type encoding
4) There should be one option reading “network.http.accept-encoding”
5) Click in the value column and type “true” (again without the inverted commas)
6) This should fix it and you can search to your hearts content.
Good luck
Matt
January 14th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Congratulations on the capacity of the website to handle multiple searches in the first days of full access. I still think it is very expensive however - especially as it is difficult to filter out possibly incorrect results without having to pay for each “view”.
Looking forward to being able to view images on-line.
January 14th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I have an unusual surname in my family that brings up only 9 hits when searching. I know that there are at least 4 more, living in London in a house that is still in existance in SW1W, and visible via Google Earth. However, they cannot be found on any previously known name variant, wild cards do not work, and a place search gives 4 houses in the street where I believe they live, where the highest house number is 61!
There seems to be no way of peforming an area search, no way of accessing a description of the enumeration area to make sure the address I’m using is correct, or any economical way to try and find my missing family as things stand. In the current econimic climate, the costs are far too high - someone is clearly out to make a quick killing - and I’m sure many pensioner researchers will be upset at the charges. The fact that finding people might be a long-winded and hit and-miss affair (i.e. true research) seems to have been missed by those setting the costs.
The quoted transcription accuracy figures are no good if your subject is one of the mistranscribed, or if the reuturns seem not to exist.
The initial verdict is therefore a very lukewarm reception as much was promised, but too little delivered. I cannot believe my problems are exceptional, therefore there will be many disappointed people out there.
January 14th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I’m disappointed that although I could use any leftover 1911 census credits on findmypast.com, it doesn’t work the other way, so my suscription to that site doesn’t include access to the 1911 census. Their site just says access to the 1911 is “coming in 2009″ - any idea when???
January 14th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Initial view.
Extremely expensive per page.
Colour scans add very little.
Quality of the transcription is very poor from those I’ve viewed.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Had no problems using the site apart from begrudgingly paying the expensive extra costs (2 census images for $6.95!) to my findmypast subscription. Appreciate that the costs involved in transcribing etc are large, but surely some of the costs in doing this has come from the public pursestrings after all the government rolled out a digitising plan and funding for government records years ago.
So perhaps when its time for people in the uk to complete the next census they should charge the government for completing the form!!!!! After all everybody else is making money off public records!
January 15th, 2009 at 12:52 am
I have been trying to access th site for over 24 hours from Australia and still can’t get in. All I get is the site is temporarily down. When will I be able to get access?
Olga
January 15th, 2009 at 4:52 am
“Held Up Exceptionally Well” must be as a result of nobody being able to get into the site. I have been trying for two days now and always get the message “This Web Page is Not Available”.
January 15th, 2009 at 11:37 am
To David: searching by address will be much easier shortly when we unlock the search facilities and add the RG78 Enumerator Summary Book images. please see our post on search tips for address search.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Just a tip — When trying to locate my mother I started by putting in my
Grandfather’s details. This did not locate the family record I was seeking.
As my Mother was born three years before the Census I entered the
family address from her Birth Certificate together with the family name
and Hey presto.Have had no problems whatsoever in accessing the site,
Good work Team
January 16th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I paid for the site on Tuesday and still cannot get on to do any searches.
Also sent an email for some help but as yet none forthcoming. I hope things improve soon.
January 17th, 2009 at 8:04 am
One of the worst examples of monopolistic exploitation I have ever had the misfortune to suffer. 10 Credits for a PARTIAL/INCOMPLETE! transcription is a disgrace and fraudulent - transcription should be 100% & not only partial! FMP should have included the 1911 census info as part of their normal subscriptions - as their fraudulent advertising falsely implied. FMP’s failure to reply to an email also reveals a guilty & shameful silence. Just another sordid example of RIP OFF Britain/Find My Past’s gross ineptitude, dishonesty, greed & awful lack of service.
January 17th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Crikey!!!
Though I have been critical of the pricing structure (and still am) I feel that I have to praise in one particular area - this blog.
Most blogs are ‘mediated’, i.e. someone/somepeople pass the blog entry as being OK. This is to filter out any messages that use naughty words, are litigious, or defamatory. The mediator/s on this blog, I have to say, are very fair and have included heavy criticisms (some mine) as well as praise (not mine -except this one).
January 17th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Thanks very much! We do moderate the blog (i.e we approve all comments before publishing them) but we have so far only deleted one comment, because it was spam. In terms of naughty words, we have let some through, but only because they were amusing rather than gratuitous.
We don’t believe in censoring our own blog - apart from anything else, it’s largely pointless to not publish critical comments because a. you wouldn’t trust the blog or use it b. there are a billion other places on the internet you can let off steam (and there are too few of us to be on all of them and talk to you there). We’re happy to provide a place to do it here and to let others see it. And respond to some of the criticism, if we can do that in a vaguely coherent way.
From some of the comments it’s clear that many do not believe it, but as a company we are very driven by listening to customers and understanding their concerns. We do not get everything right first time but if we don’t listen, we won’t get it right second time either. So we’ll listen and try to fix things that we can do something about. But no, you can’t have Wales yet (cos it’s not finished), and you *will* have to wait for the subscriptions.
By the way, ton the subject of complete transcriptions: the only parts we leave off the transcript is number of rooms in the house and children born to marriage. We leave these off because neither is particularly useful to search by (”I don’t know my ancestor’s first name, but I do know his house had 6 rooms and he had 2 children who died young” is not a common scenario).
If you can find a definition of fraudulent that encapsulates what we have done here, I’d be interested to see it. In the meantime, we remain reasonably confident that the SFO are not about to beat down our door and take us all off to Paddington Green.
Compare this with previous censuses from a range of suppliers and I think you will see that, as is normal, findmypast.com have provided a significantly more complete transcription than most of our competitors (as we do with all our censuses). Incidentally, we also allow you to search all fields transcribed. Because we know that providing the most flexible searches is what will keep you happy. Talking of which, not long now until we start to unlock the search features.
Have a good evening. I’m going to research some more forebears.But not the Thomases in Glamorgan. I’ll just have to be patient.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I was one of the first to access the 1911 census and generally have been happy with it until today when I have been able to get on the site. My main gripes are the cost and waiting for the unfinished areas to come on line. The comment “COMING SOON” does give enough information. Is there any chance of being more specific about each area?
January 18th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Following my last comment, what I meant to say was that the phrase “COMING SOON” does NOT give enough information. I am waiting expectantly for information about the other ridings of Yorkshire! Worried that the credits may expire before the info is available.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Of the dozen or so searches I have made for people known to be living in England in the counties available at least a third has resulted in “no records found”. Does this imply that the website data is incomplete in a random way?