Member Tree Searches - When Places don't match

By Geoffrey Slinker, Ancestry Employee

The postings on this site are my own and do not reflect the views or opinions of Ancestry. 

The place for an Event may not be found in the "place system". This leads to what are known as "normalization" issues.

Consider this normalization example where the user can enter any of these:

• Glasgow, Barren, Kentucky
• Glasgow, Barren County, Ky, USA
• Glasgow, Barren Co, Ky, USA

All of those represent the same place. Therefore when the data is entered it is normalized into one representation.

• Glasgow, Barren, Kentucky, USA

That is "normalizing". That way no matter which representation of the place you use it will convert to the normalized place and then any data that has that normalized value will be found in a search query.

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/?name=_Slinker&birth=_Glasgow+Kentucky&birth_x=_1-0&count=50&name_x=psi_1

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/?name=_Slinker&birth=_Glasgow+Barren+Ky&birth_x=_1-0&count=50&name_x=psi_1

The system that normalizes the places may not know of a specific place. The place data is always growing and changing. So what happens when a place is not known?

Here is an example. Please note that at the time of publication of this blog that the places were as described. The system is constantly improving and this example may not be the same in the future.

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/?name=John_Coleman&birth=1817-10-5&birth_x=0-0-0&count=50&name_x=psi_1

The thing to notice is the birth place, "Foxton, Cambridgeshire, England".

If you go to the result you see the place is "Foxton, Leicestershire, England".

The problem is that the Foxton in Leicestershire is not in the system.

This blog entry is not about how and why such problems exist, but how to work around them.

Suppose you search for someone born in Foxton, Leicestershire, England.

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/?name=John_Coleman&birth=1817-10-5_foxton-leicestershire-england-united+kingdom_85073&birth_x=0-0-0_1-0&count=50&name_x=psi_1

The results are empty! No one was found! That just can't be, you know there are persons born in Foxton, Cambridgeshire, England!

Here is how you get around this in Public Member Tree searches. Move the place to the "Key Words".

Here are the results!

Now to share a little feature that until now I only knew about. You can prefix the keyword search with birth, marriage, death, or residence.

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/?name=John_Coleman&birth=1817-10-5&birth_x=0-0-0_1-0&count=50&keyword=Birth+Foxton,+Leicestershire,+England&keyword_x=1&name_x=psi_1

By prefixing the key word with birth it found data where there was a birth event that had Foxton, Leicestershire, England as well.

Since the results shows John Coleman we can see he died in Market Harborough. So if I change this search to be for a death in Foxton, Leicestershire, England it should not find John Coleman because he did not die in Foxton, Leicestershire, England.

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1030/?name=John_Coleman&birth=1817-10-5&birth_x=0-0-0_1-0&count=50&keyword=Death+Foxton,+Leicestershire,+England&keyword_x=1&name_x=psi_1

Please read previous posts about searching!

Historical Places - Cities that Change Name

Search for Persons in User Contributed Trees