Ancestry.com Reviews

(based on 22 reviews)

73 of 158 people found this review helpful

I too, am finding that the DNA connection circles are changing often. I have even lost a MRCA who is my 3 GGM.
At one time I had 9 DNA matches with this ancestor. Now, I have none.
On the other DNA circles my DNA matches pop on and then pop off. (Is the science this unpredictable that it will not post). I will go outside ancestry and post this message.

Not only this....but I seem to get very many errors on this site. I have used several different search engines and they all end up with the same result. I think it is time to try another product. (Including this message.)

Plus there Help service is pretty much non-existent.

In summary, I would recommend Ancestry.com to a friend.

266 of 484 people found this review helpful

So, I have used this site almost from the beginning and from an "access to records" it is fantastic. So, for searching out information on people born after 1800 it works very well. The ability to attach these records as basis help as you are building your tree.

My major complaint is the lack of validation of data in family trees. There are very few trees on Ancestry.com that are "factual", i.e. based on records and valid sources. I would never use another tree on Ancestry.com to build my family tree. The biggest issue is where someone makes a mistake, or takes a leap of faith and then hundreds of people copy it, and it becomes "truth". Literally, there are so many cases of children born after parents died, child born when mother is under 10 years old, people with 27 children, etc. I just ignore all those trees. There are cases where people have documentation that looks like a good source for the person in the tree, but, when you validate, or look at the source, it actually has nothing to do... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would not recommend Ancestry.com to a friend.

267 of 492 people found this review helpful

Ancestry is the 900 pound gorilla of genealogy, I get that, but as the single largest expense in my genealogy budget (behind experts and genealogy travel) I expect the best and have not been delivered that level of quality.

The search logic is terrible at times and forces me to go dozens of pages deep to find a name that may be simply misspelled by one letter.

The cost is high, the quality is not. They have integrated some of Fold3, but continue to force you to buy a Fold3 subscription for that organization for certain materials. Archives.com will probably be the same.

I am getting increasingly frustrated with Ancestry and hope new owners will shore them up.

In summary, I would recommend Ancestry.com to a friend.

190 of 389 people found this review helpful

For the most part I like Ancestry. The website says it takes "a week or more" for your family tree to be made public after you choose that option. I have been waiting for weeks, and was just told by someone in their technical support that it takes 4 or 5 weeks. I can't imagine why it would take that long, and why the website doesn't indicate that.

In summary, I would recommend Ancestry.com to a friend.

289 of 508 people found this review helpful

Good Points, it has a tremendous amount of records, the most of any site I have subscribed to. Its online family tree is adequate and the best feature is the hints capability. It lacks many tools that Family Tree Maker software has, I.E. you cannot merge or manage duplicate information or persons. I often find that I have to download my tree as a gedcom, fix what I need and upload back to the website. I have subscribed to Ancestory for 3 years now and it continues to be the best so far, but also the most expensive. It's almost to the point that the average person can't afford it. I have many family members who rely on me to get information because of the subscription price.

Searching - I have to disagree with the review on searching by name or any other data. If you type in a name for search along with date and location, you will get thousands of names to search through, and they are not always what you typed. Oh you will likey get to the person you were looking for, after looking and going through 100's of names. It's very time consuming. Another example,... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would recommend Ancestry.com to a friend.