Last year, Ancestry announced "Smart Search" in beta, intended to be a more intuitive search form with "enhanced logic" for focusing on more relevant results. It has shown up on my family trees and last week, I tried it for several ancestors, some I knew little about and some I know lots about.
One of the striking things about Smart Search is the way results are formatted into three main categories: People (basically, family trees), records (mainly historical documents), and photos (user-submitted and records-based). This makes it easy to focus on specific types of search results.
While I like the formatting, and the multiple filters (see red arrow above), I don't really see any major improvement compared to "classic search." Above, the top "records" result for my hubby's great-grandpa, Edward George Steiner (1830-1880). Nope, not him.
The top photo results using Smart Search were gravestones of this ancestor. Yes, that's him. If I want, I can filter by location, date, and other elements (see red arrow above).
When I switched back to classic search, the top overall results were gravestone photos and his name in birth records of his children. Correct. Remember, Ancestry knows I already have many sources linked to this man, and therefore its search technology attempts to avoid dupes.
When I filtered classic search results for "family trees," he was shown in 48 different trees. My tree, which is referenced first, has more sources/records than the other trees, but still I checked other trees in case there were fresh clues.
So far, I haven't found a compelling reason to use Smart Search, but I'll continue experimenting. Do you use Smart Search? What do you think?
I've tested Smart Search, but I prefer the Classic Search. Maybe it's one of those cases where I just don't like change, but it didn't seem "better" - just different. I default to Classic every single time.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree...no compelling reason to use it. I do think that the filter should be standard, not necessarily under a new gimic. ;)
ReplyDeleteI don't have it yet, but I can see how for people new to genealogy research might find it easier to use.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Diane that filtering should be standard.
My last comment should have been from my Google account, not Anonymous!
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