What's going on with Ancestry now?

[emanday]

This has happened a few times in the last couple of weeks, but today has been especially bad.

Wanting to recheck a couple of things I'd found and noted, I entered the same search criteria. Nothing to be found!

After a few of these "happenings", I entered a search for a census I had saved to my PC from Ancestry. Again - it couldn't be found!

I know they have been fiddling around a lot recently, so I'm hoping none of their techie bods have "misplaced" bits of the database that the search uses

[SarahND]

Hi Mary,
It's working okay for me tonight... Are you using .co.uk or .com? Not sure if it actually makes a difference, but in case, I'm using .com

Cheers,
Sarah

[Tracey]

What i have been getting today / night which i totally missed until i scrolled further down the page is an error message along the lines of *not all result being shown due to a technical hitch.

[emanday]

Hi Sarah,

I mostly use .co.uk, but I also got the same results on .com

Hi Tracey,

I've seen that message as well, but not with these "missing" records.

Just tried to find the same census again and it is still MIA

[Tracey]

Mary, I know exactly what you mean, its so frustrating, what we call a *Dot Cotton moment*.

But, they do seem to have added more to help me recently re Canadian records and if this information had been attached to the ship manifest i would have had answers to one particular question a few years ago - and this is one of my *just incase* monthy searches, so Ancestry is my friend at the moment

[trish1]

Mary

Are you searching the individual data bases? I find information goes missing in action if I search "all" Census records - but by individually searching I often find what I want. Sometimes a search on given name only will also find what I want - whereas a search using the surname does not - Some ref numbers seem to need leading zeros - some don't - Each maintenance session appears to involve a reindex which finds and loses some of the data! Then there is the new search vs the old search (I use old), the exact option (which I always use), when in various different versions (.com, .au, .ca, .uk) ticking a box to only select a certain country's results etc etc.

Despite all that - I have had an ancestry sub for 4 years and cannot imagine living without it (addicted)

Trish

[SarahND]

Hi Trish,
I would second your suggestion of going to the individual database and searching. For some reason, that is the only way I can ever find any results in the Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (which is full of my ancestors).

Despite all that - I have had an ancestry sub for 4 years and cannot imagine living without it (addicted)

Next month it will be 9 years for me The problem with this addiction is that, back when it was inexpensive I was earning a good salary. Now that I am retired and trying to live on no income, the price has shot up Shouldn't there be a discount for old-timers?

All the best,
Sarah

[emanday]

Hi All,

I do try to use the individual censuses and other databases where possible, and that is what I tried when looking for the previously saved image.

Tried again earlier this morning - It's back!

I also have had a sub on Ancestry for a number of years and am also addicted to it. Using it for Scottish censuses (mistranscriptions notwithstanding ) has saved me a lot of money. Only when I've found the one I want do I use SP to obtain the image.

Strictly speaking, I should be a bit more understanding about Ancestry's regular "maintenance downtimes" and the odd missing sections of databases. I am a retired database designer, after all, and I've done the same kind of things to users myself in the past when updating/upgrading bits and pieces.

[SarahND]

Hi Mary,
Now it's doing it to me I can search and find someone it the Scotland censuses, but then when I click on a family member to look at their information, I get an error message, for example:

Safari can’t open the page “http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse. ... y&h=980887”. The error is: “bad server response” (NSURLErrorDomain:-1011)

I have to retry up to 10 times to finally get over to the requested page Do you think it's the high traffic because of WDYTYA in the U.S.?

Sarah

[emanday]

Hi Sarah,

I know the speed of searches has been badly affected by that, but I only notice it if I'm using it late at night (when the USA is up and about).

About an hour ago I had to run the same search about five times before it actually got any results!