Address search at FMP

[Bryman]

It is quite unusual that an address has been mistranscribed - mainly because street names typically appear multiple times, but perhaps also because transcribers were provided with a list of street names for cities (ie the ones we used to look up in the Family Records Centre).

Some people following this discussion may not realise that there are TWO ways of searching the 1901 and 1911 censuses by address at the new Findmypast site. One is to click the Address tab - this returns a list of streets which match your search criteria, which is similar to the old site.

Thank you Peter. At one point I had failed to find 1911 census returns for any addresses in Slinfold, Sussex, and thought they had been destroyed by an act of vandalism but now I can see that the WHOLE village was mistranscribed for FMP as Shinfold, which does not exist.

It is VERY easy to miss the Person/Address tabs unless you know of their existence, even though they are right in the centre of the screen.

 

[peter]

Scottish searches is all I ever used it for, ie: the address search that returned addresses not people as results found many a farm name in Scotland that was spelt differently in different census entries. I only ever used it to search Scottish parishes. So it did indeed work for Scotland.

The problem first reported to me in 2012 related to certain streets in Edinburgh, but it was also pointed out by the same member that there were no results for 'Victoria Street' in the whole of Scotland (the new site finds 44 in the 1901 Census). Findmypast did agree that there was a problem, and as far as I know it was never fixed - however I rarely use the Scottish censuses myself, so it might have been remedied without anyone telling me.

Agreed people aren't likely to be researching buildings but that's not the point is it? The point it that it is extremely common for rural buildings, especially farms and cottages to be recorded differently from one census to another. I've had "Backhill of Overton", "Overton Back 'O Hill" and just "Backhill" as different records for the same place.

I don't know where to look for that particular entry, but my searches using the Address tab certainly found similarly named places (see my earlier post). The old site wasn't perfect - some named places showed up in address searches, but some didn't. When I searched a town or village there could be lots of search results at the end of the list with no place name shown, and only by clicking through could you find out which properties they related to. (This may not have been a problem with Scottish censuses - I didn't routinely use them as I don't have any Scottish connections.)

I cannot understand why you think having an ALTERNATE method of searching is a disadvantage.

I didn't say that - in fact, I pointed out that there are two different ways to search by address at the new site, compared to only one at the old site.

Of course you are but there really is no need to be so stick in the mud about the fact that many of us would welcome an alternative. To be blunt WE ARE NOT LOOKING FOR PLACES, we are looking for people and we miss the alternate method of finding them. in the various census entries as you used to be able to do To suggest otherwise is to completely mis-represent or totally mis-understand our points. Which is precisely what FMP are doing.

I can't see what has been lost. There are two different ways to search the 1911 Census by address, and if you use the Address tab it is very similar to the address search at the old site. The second option is to use the Person search to search by address - this is usually my choice because it saves a lot of time when searching long roads.

Perhaps you are looking at earlier censuses, where the Address tab has yet to be added?

However as has been said time and time again by people in this thread FMP aren't listening they are making the same mistake as yourself and talking about searching for people which misses the point entirely. To your credit you do point out the alternative for the later census thanks.

If you raise a query with Customer Support it is dealt with by a Customer Support person, but if you post something on the Ideas Board it is read by someone involved in development. Findmypast users had plenty of opportunity to comment on the plans for the address search - there was a long-running consultation to which over 1500 Findmypast users contributed in one way or another (correction: over 1500 votes were cast but users could cast more than one vote, although they had a limited number of votes to use across all the topics).

 

[Heather]

Some people following this discussion may not realise that there are TWO ways of searching the 1901 and 1911 censuses by address at the new Findmypast site.

Yes Peter that is great, but the old address search could be used for every census not just 1901 and 1911.

 

[peter]

Yes Peter that is great, but the old address search could be used for every census not just 1901 and 1911.

Quite right - and the 1911 search was intended as a prototype for other census years (see the Ideas Board discussion to which I and 150 other subscribers contributed).

Right now the Findmypast aren't making any promises about when - or even whether - the new search will be extended to earlier census years and they need to be encouraged to do so. If people complain to Findmypast about address searches generally it is likely to delay the process - we need to be encouraging them, telling them that what they've done for 1911 is great, and that it needs to be extended.