I am not sure whether this is a fresh search or a search from a family
tree entry, and that may be part of what is going on.
Also, I get the best results by using Exact Match for essential terms,
and wildcards if I am not sure of the spelling. The initial results
of a general search still do not come up with what I am looking for,
but the trick is to narrow down what kinds of results - click on
Birth, Marriage, Death if you are looking for that, or Census, or
Military, for example, and then instead of looking at the records,
click on the Collections tab, and it will give you a list of
collections there are hits in, and then select what you are interested
in to view the hit list.
Also, you can select what you want to emphasize geographically. If
you only want England and Wales records, click on that rather than
leaving the dropdown set on All Collections or United States. Then
click on UPDATE.
If you want records only for a specific location, then fill that in as
a search term with exact match, and you should not get records for
elsewhere.
Also, filling in too many boxes is generally counterproductive, their
engine looks for records with a mix/match of what you filled in. Pick
the most important demographics, and just search on those.
I would just fill in name, birth year, birth place, parents or spouse
(depending on what you expect to find on the record) and only add
fields if you get too many results.
I do have a page with tips about searching, although it focusses more
on how to use wildcards and the reasons records may not be accurate,
and may be too elementary for what you need.
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~thecohens/genealogy/research.html
On 1/5/19, Ian Graham via GLAMORGAN <glamorgan(a)rootsweb.com> wrote:
> Hallo, group
>
> This is nothing whatever to do with Glamorgan specifically, but I hope I
> might benefit from general advice from regulars here.
>
> I'm just coming out of a holiday where, spurred by seasonal interchange
> with an American 5th cousin, I've been active in FamHist. I mostly use
> Ancestry as my first resort. Their search screen has multiple, indeed
> intricate options - yet their report ordering then seems to take little
> if any notice of what I put in. The first 'n' offers frequently
> contradict the input search terms in multiple particulars. Conversely, a
> few days ago I found an exact match of the terms I had set on the second
> screen of the report ! Am I missing something here ?
>
> Best wishes for 2019
>
> Ian G