Ancestry.com Reviews

(based on 22 reviews)

235 of 411 people found this review helpful

I have been a steady subscriber of Ancestry since 2000 and off and on for a few years before that. I have cancelled my subscription which ends June 30th. The decision was based on the deletion of the "old search" and offering only the new search as their search functionality. The "new search" has been around since 2008 and they haven't gotten it right yet. I have tried it off and on over the years and reverted back to the old search. Since the old search was removed, I have given the new search a real try. While I have figured out how to work around many of its technical flaws, I no longer think it is worth the subscription price to have to do that. The other factor in actually making the decision to drop the subscription is that while veteran, experienced researchers and many with IT experience have noted the technical flaws, Ancestry comes back and says it is just a matter of getting used to it. They provide a link to the simulated old search function which is a joke as it is nothing like the old search. ... (Read the full review)

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

263 of 479 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.

244 of 453 people found this review helpful

I have been subscribed to Ancestry.co.uk for nearly a year now. On the whole it is an excellent concept and seems in my opinion to offer far more that other programs.
It is by far the easiest to search for people and the overall layout is great for my purposes. I like the ready access to a tree layout , person detail and places.

However I find 5 things are now clouding the overall picture.

1. Inability to remove unwanted items. I have a number of entries stating "Shared Facts with Unknown", which should be removed but cannot be.
2. Location names are changing to undecipherable 7 figure numbers which according to 2Ancestry" they have no idea why it is happening and have no clue how to resolve the issue.
3. Added media items are moving themselves from the person concerned, to incorrect people in the tree.
4. There is far too much bias toward reults from USA. Realising the program originates from there, it would be nice if it could be restricted when required, to the country required in the search.
5. Without subscribing to the "Wholeworld" program, ... (Read the full review)

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

264 of 487 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.

241 of 474 people found this review helpful

The searches are amazing. You do a search, review, modify current data, and search again, and it will use modified results to add to the search depth of subsequent searches. I have not lost any of my data, even though I have hundreds of newly discovered relatives. Ancestry.com organizes your data so well and I am so pleased. The charts are so easy to use.

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

249 of 471 people found this review helpful

I have been on ancestry for almost 3 years now that amount of information that I have found has been tremendous. I have learned so much from my family history that I did not know before. But I do think alot of people go on to ancestry without really understanding exactly what the site is. It is a compilation of various state and federal public records. Ancestry does not write any of the information...they only organize it for the use of its members. So, if incorrect information, incorrect spellings, wrong dates, lack of information on documents, etc, are found by members, it is not the fault of ancestry. The incorrect information comes from the public records this way, which can happen for alot of reasons(i.e. transcription errors, lack of documentation from old records, lack of education and knowledge that was much more common in the mid 1900s and before, etc). Also found on ancestry is a compilation of members input, such as their own public family trees, photos, stories. These trees are made soley by ancestry members, again-NOT ancestry. Other family trees can be great as guides, but must never be taken as facts.... (Read the full review)

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

287 of 515 people found this review helpful

I've subscribed to Ancestry.com for many years. I consider it essential for my research, but it can be extremely frustrating to use, and you really need to know what you are doing in order to evaluate the search results. The best things about it are the quantity of records, the advanced search, and the US Census Images. I use the advanced search for my initial search on each person, tweaking the settings based on who I'm searching for. The fuzzy search is pretty good, but searches often either miss relevant records or return vast numbers of irrelevant records. Also, transcription errors are rife, and I often have to "trick" the search engine into finding people whose names have been mistranscribed. Thank goodness users can now enter alternate names! The search also doesn't do very well at finding some obvious spelling variations -- it's quite hit or miss. (For instance, I had to do separate searches on "Mc Coy" and "McCoy," though I think they may have fixed this by now.) Another problem is that the proliferation of Public Member Trees has resulted in a proliferation of wrong information that is mindlessly copied by other users, and most users don't document... (Read the full review)

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

234 of 442 people found this review helpful

I have been a member of Ancestry.com for three years, and when my subscription expired earlier this month, I didn't renew it. I am undecided on that. It is horribly expensive for somebody on a fixed income. For the amount of time it takes to find one name in a category, in the right state, it is terribly time consuming. Most of the time I end up scrolling through 100s of names before I find the right one. It would be a really big help if they would be arranged alphabetically under each category. Example: under birth, death, marriage, christening, etc. Instead I type in a name and end up getting many in the wrong states, and the categories are all mixed up. At this time I am looking into other paid sites, and still deciding if I am going to renew. I live off $700 a month total income, and it is hard to come up with that amount of money for the help that I get. A year ago when I was deciding if I should pay extra for the World Membership,I contacted Ancestry for information and... (Read the full review)

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

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... (Read the full review)

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

187 of 383 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.