17 September 2020
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This summer MyHeritage have updated their search engine to make for quicker, easier and more editable searching to keep your ancestor hunt successful
The online treasure trove of 12.5 billion historical records on MyHeritage is now quicker and easier to search than ever to find your ancestors.
When searching for your family member on MyHeritage you can edit the search while viewing the search results, so that you can rapidly fine-tune your hunt and make the most of your search time. What’s more, now more search results are displayed on each page, making it swifter to run your eye down the list looking for the best leads to follow.
A single search form
The simple search and the advanced search are unified into one search form. Below the search field the different record types are readily displayed (‘Census & voter lists’, ‘Family trees’, ‘Birth, marriage & death’, ‘Photos’, and ‘Military’). as are the record collections that have been recently added to MyHeritage.
If you wish you can run a global search across all the MyHeritage collections, opting to specify any combination of the following details for your ancestor: first, middle and last names, year of birth, and any place of a life event associated with that person. Once you fill in a field the advanced search options will appear relevant to that field, allowing you to search solely for exact matches, or to include variations. For dates, the advanced options will allow you to search by a partial or full date.
You can also choose to filter your search results by adding details for your search person’s parents, spouse, other relatives or other live events (the life event filters will change according to your current search). This can be so useful, helping you to narrow down your search results and also to verify that you have found the correct person going by that name etc.
Narrow down
Top tip: once you have y our list of search results use the ‘narrow down’ panel on the left to edit and refine your search. If you wish to broaden out your search again, you can clear off filters that you no longer wish to use – simply hover above the filter and click ‘X’. This means that you can follow your train of thought, without wasting time and returning to the start of your search – you can evolve your search as you go.
Future developments to look forward to from the MyHeritage search experience
- Family trees and historical records are differentiated by icons in your search results list so that you can readily tell them apart and future updates to MyHeritage are going to allow the option to exclude family trees from search results listings.
- The new search engine will be accessible on mobile devices.
- You’ll be able to bookmark your favourite records for easy future access.
- And you’ll be able to filter results based on geography – ideal for searching for an ancestor in a particular place.
