Tuesday, September 29, 2015

New Canadian Ancestry.ca


Last night, I received notification from the Canadian arm of Ancestry that they would be changing the landing page and adding some features to Ancestry.ca. 

They said that Ancestry.ca "would appear with new storytelling features and a streamlined design, the new Ancestry site will help Canadians move beyond names and dates, enhancing the stories of their ancestors’ lives. 

A few new features include: 

LifeStory, which uses events, sources and relationships you’ve collected in your family tree to create a holistic, time-based narrative of these moments;

Historical Insights will now appear within your ancestor’s life story, giving you context about the events that impacted their lives; 

Facts and Galleries will transform how you view, arrange and share the details of your ancestors’ lives.

As you begin to explore the updated site, please let us know if you have any questions, or need any help navigating the new features". 

Ancestry.com put on this new landing site and the other features about a month ago. It is clear that they are aiming towards the “new customer” (someone who has never used Ancestry before), and are not placating the “seasoned” researcher to find and improve on their research - those that have already found ancestors.

It would be my fervent wish that Ancestry would improve their search algorithms so that it doesn't give me WHITE instead of WAITE, and Halifax, Nova Scotia instead of Halifax, England, or Halifax, Virginia. I have to use the browse feature instead of the search feature.

Pat Richley-Erickson of Mondays with Myrt, a Google+ Hangout on Air, suggested yesterday that
a clearing house of complaints should be set-up so that we can put our frustrations online, instead of not having them answered by the Ancestry people. 

If you are not a member of her genealogy community on Goggle+, you can go to YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ap4JKxu58 and view it there. 

I will keep you posted on this development.

 ==============================================================================================================================

Check the Canadian Week in Review (CWR) every Monday morning for the latest in Genealogy, Heritage, and History news in Canada.

If you missed last week’s edition, it is 


It’s the ONLY news blog of its kind in Canada!