For the last few days, genealogists have been airing their concerns about Ancestry.com’s decision to kill off it’s ‘old search’ tool. A poll conducted on this website finds that 50% of the respondents want ‘old search’ to remain.
Questioning the quality of the Ancestry ‘new search’ search results in discussions on blogs, on twitter, and in LinkedIn groups, professional genealogists and amateur family historians alike have been vocal in their concerns at the demise of ‘old search’. Those who want ‘old search’ to remain, claim that it provides more exact matches and fewer ‘padded out’ results (the ‘padding’ being photos and member tree matches – both of which are known to be blighted by swathes of incorrect information).
However, almost a quarter of respondents said that they use ‘new search’ and the remainder were split between those who ‘don’t mind’ (14%), and those who were not aware that there are two different searches (14%).
Unsure whether you’re using new or old? Here’s how to tell…

Visit Ancestry.com (or .co.uk as in the screenshot above). Click ‘Search’ in the navigation, and then check over to the right. Whichever version it names here, you’re using the other one!
Ancestry.com claim that they are taking notice, and have launched a survey to collect the responses from users.
The poll on this site ran from June 29 – July 5 2013.