New at Geneanet: a richer, more concise search results screen!

We are excited to tell you about our new search results page! Before we do that though, let’s talk about search in general for a moment.

Genealogists today spend a lot of time sifting through online databases, trying to find records worth inspecting or looking for clues in others’ trees: sources, documents, or even photos. Savvy genealogists know some search tips and tricks which work on most databases, for example choosing advanced search options (if available) with keywords, date ranges, geographical scope, and so on; using wildcards to overcome spelling variations; or using a filter to restrict search to a certain type of record or even a single collection. Basic information can often be found easily on vital records (birth/marriage/death) or censuses, if the original spellings and indexed transcriptions are accurate, which is not always the case!

However, we all know that finding a golden nugget of information is most often not the result of a single lucky search, but an iterative process where we refine a search a few times until we reduce search results to a manageable number of records to look at. This is particularly true when searching an ancestor with a common name; you have to check many hits knowing they may not be the correct individual. This is where the search results screen comes in: it helps you decide if you should rerun a search with a new filter, or start working the results list. 6,000,000 results, and none on the first page seem relevant? Or you have them already? Time to refine! Perhaps your results are “polluted” by many hits from a source you know to be unreliable, such as an erroneous tree? Filter it out!

Geneanet’s searchresults page now has exciting new features:

• A more concise, more visually rich layout, with a great new feature: any search result you have already looked at will be flagged with a gray background. This will help you work your list of search results, and save you time by remembering for you what you have seen already! (Note that clearing your browser’s cache will reset this feature.)

• Birth, marriage, and death records of a person are now grouped on a single line instead of separate lines, with the place shown for each event; new icons indicate the type of event in the record.

• Thumbnails are now specific for different record types. And if the search hit is an individual in a tree who has a portrait photo, this appears directly in the search results! This is a great visual clue for genealogists — perhaps that tree has other family photos!
• The small up arrows indicating one or both parents have been grouped together, and new down arrows signifying a child or children have been added. Check at a glance if the search hit has information you don’t have!
• Source descriptors: usernames and collection codes have been replaced with full text descriptions. This will help you understand more easily where the information is coming from, e.g. an archive or a tree. For example: “Archives: Germany, Marriages, 1558-1929” instead of “colgnecm1473009”; “Family tree of pat1mn” instead of “pat1mn”.
• New filters: limit search to Ahnentafel number (direct ancestors of the tree owner); limit search to non-Premium results (for free members); birth, marriage, or death events in any combination (for Premium members)
• Two new sorting options: first name and source username, in addition to surname and year, with the possibility of setting multiple criteria, for example username+year to see the earliest record in someone’s tree
• Inverting sort order: e.g., from A to Z or from Z to A
• Fast internet available? Up to 100 results per page, up from 50!
• Direct link to your search preferences in the search criteria section (Premium members)

Try the new search results page now!

Search Geneanet

Reminder, Geneanet’sadvanced search — available to Premium members — offers wildcards,search of spouse and/or parents of an individual, name and place namevariants, and nearby places within a radius of 200km (125 mi). Boostyour searches with affordable Premium membership!