Genealogy Chat

Just wondering why many of my Hot Matches don't match anything. Totally different names to those in my tree. Very odd.

hello i had a match with mothers side of the family when i had a reply it was a match with anoter part of the part of the family very odd too
sally

If the names themselves are different, one possibility is that either you or the other member concerned has uploaded a new gedcom since the last Hotmatch run.

It should sort it out next time around. If not then report it to GR giving specific examples.

I have had miss matches a few times and have never up loaded a Gedcom

seems GR do not have access to an Atlas!!!!

I've had the same thing.
Two matches at top of page where name year and place of birth don't match at all for instance
Joe Bloggs ............ Robin Smith
b 1903 .................. b 1856
Portsmouth .............Glasgow

but the next match does match!!!
Must be a gremlin in the works!!!

Teresa

My matches are all messed up since I uploaded a new Gedcom. I have 4 pages of mis-matches, and no correct matches.

Hot matches seem to be all those with the same name regardless of where in the country they are born.

However some members may have a place of birth but havnt confirmed it. Only assuming they are born there because that is where they lived.

I have never uploaded a gedcom but my matches are not matches at all, not first name, not surname , not year or place of birth. I've reached a point where I just ignore them.

just looked at my hot matches for today and the names & yob all match (mind you there were only 2 pages instead of my usual 4 or 5 pages of Jones matches!). I guess they ignore place of birth when matching as people are often not sure so put a rough guess eg Liverpool when they really meant Ormskirk or Everton etc. Mind you including county in the match criteria would be nice - it's amazing how many Millers were born in Salt lake city which match my Liverpool ones!

I have had oddities in the past but not for a while.

Place names are not taken into account by the hot match program.

The reasons for this have been mentioned many times before but it is due to the complexity of writing a program that will treat W Brom as a match to West Brom, to W Bromwich etc. As someone who has been involved with name and address matching in the past for a major bank I know that it is all to easy to miss matches that a human would spot, so however complex you make it it is always down to a manual check at the end of the day.

If they get out of synch because you or another member has uploaded a new gedcom, then they will resolve themselves when the match program runs again.

You are not obliged to look at Hot Matches (you can always search and match manually) but most find useful connections from time to time, that they wern't aware of, despite the limitations.

This is what GR say on the subject

" At the moment we just match the name and year of birth. However, we may make changes to the way system works in the future and add in the place of birth as a match. The problem is that members add the place in different way, or it can be mis-spelt. Some might add the town, others the full address. This makes it difficult to match. By keeping the search broad we feel you have a greater chance of a match.

If you'd prefer a closer match then we suggest you either look at the matches we suggest against your tree. You'll see matches in a drop-down box when viewing your tree. There is also the My Tree Matches page which matches the surnames in your tree."

I had a laugh last night as I received an information email from GR to say they had found matches for Mary Unknown.
Apparently she appears in 948 trees.

If you put Unkown in the surname box, then expect to get some matches. The computer doesn't know any better.....!