Genealogy Chat

Sorry to bring this up again but still confused. Genes Reunited gave me several Hot Matches, 3 of which were excellent having 5 or more same names DOB and POB as mine. When I have contacted these users and/or viewed their trees there is nothing to match at all. I could be quite cynical in thinking that GR wanted me to pay the joining up fee to contact these people but that surely couldn't be the case.

I think the truth is, the Hot Matches often aren't very "hot" at all. I've started going through mine and ignoring ones with just one or two matching relatives that are distant connections to me.

I wish they could do something whereby it actively looked for your direct ancestors, say great-grandparents and then their parents etc. I'm sure somewhere there must be a computer programme that could tackle it.

kate and whippet are spot on. as your tree grows you get inudated with hot matches with 1 or 2 names and sometimes places are totally misleading.
Ignore matches with less than 3 hits and you'll find the good ones. i.e ones which have actual tree builders on and not just those who fill in a couple of their imediate family members and then leave the site never to return

must be something wrong with my lot i dont get any at all now
fran

The only ones I seem to get now are for leaves hanging onto a very small twig - for example the person's grandfather's sister's great grand daughter married a great great uncle.

Just remembered about this thread - as Simon mentioned, one of my other tactics is to examine the amount of hot matches with the other person. If, say, they have the wife of my great-uncle Harold in their tree but not Harold himself, that suggests to me that they are exploring the family of Harold's wife (and that she may possibly be a tenuous connection in their tree at that).

If, however, I get a hot match with eight matching names, one being my great uncle Harold and the rest being his siblings born before 1900 and the parents of the brood, I might contact that person because there is a reasonable chance that that family group is of interest to the person I have got a match with.

I think you have to use a bit of critical judgment with them, as much as anything. I often discard matches for people who are actually in my tree because the match is a person connected very distantly. (That doesn't apply if one of the matches actually is my direct ancestor, though.)

Sorry folks, but I think you are totally wrong. Sure, people with multiple matches are going to be good, but sometimes you get one where the person has only just started out researching that line and hasn't got any further. They are worth contacting. Or the branch of their family is a bit remote - I had one this week, her Hague ancestor is the brother of my Hague Ancester so I am interested, but he is only the brother in law of hers, so she hasn't researched any further. But we are definitely connected, and will keep it on one side until either of us goes further up that route. We aren't inclined to do so at the moment, too keen on direct people, but in the future, who knows?

I've never had a hot match which didn't match the year.

Admittedly those with only one match are less likely to be relevant, but I check them all out or I wouldn't have found the one above I have just mentioned.

A true researcher leaves no stone unturned. Read them all, friends, you never know.

Margaret

And PS the Hague contact I had this week is the only every Hague contact I have had in two years, so she is gold to me.

What annoys me is when somebody supposedly has 3 or more names matching mine but when I look I find Joe Blogs appears 3 or more times in their tree to match Joe Blogs who appears only once in mine.

Worse is when they have Joe Blogs matched with my Jane Plain.

Huia.

HotMatches are matched on name and year of birth, no other details are checked.

If you or the other member has uploaded a new gedcom file or even deleted their file since the matching program was last run, it is possible to get what appear to be spurious matches i.e. wrong surnames, or even none at all. .

As far as I can tell, these will resolve themselves next time HotMatches is run.

They are not to everone's taste but you don't have to make use of them, just do your own searching / matching manually.

However I find that the do come up with a new lead every now and again.