Ancestry.com Reviews

(based on 22 reviews)

253 of 468 people found this review helpful

The search engine is somewhat faulty. It will ignore exact matches and give you results that are not relevant either soundex or phonetic. This makes it mandatory that you search by hand thru the record and unfortunately sometimes all you have are indexes. The index also is difficult not clarifying names. For example, WHICH John Smith are you looking at? This leads to research problems and you end up chasing false leads which if you could have seen the record is the proper setting might you might have ignored.

It also bases hints on the most numerous entries. That means if 50 people are wrong and one is right, you will get the 50 wrong. You have to fiddle with the name to make other names that are soundex or phonetic matches appear. So the search is quite labor intensive often yielding poor results.

There is also a problem with the way it records the documentation that is a source. It doesn't understand the difference between sources and what is or isn't a source. Those 50 people are NOT sources. This leads to problems of accuracy.

The features and ease of creating a tree is wonderful. The tech support is fair. They can only do so much and when you have a problem that is technical, they have to refer you. For example my Family tree has been broken for 2 weeks. The pedigree tree is fine.

Joining is easy. Payment is easy. However for the price asked, it is just as easy to find the sources elsewhere. The overall value isn't worth it because of the search and the difficulty of finding full records to go through difficult.

It's good for those who want to dilly dally and say they are researching but for those who are serious, it is a two star site. If you want to get your feet wet, try it. If you are serious, don't waste your time.

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