Sunday, March 4, 2012

Wildcards at Ancestry.com-Begin the Term?

Perhaps I missed the news release, but today Ancestry.com allowed me to search for the 1910 census for the following name combination:

*lliam as the first name
*vetter as the last name

Very cool. I was not aware that wildcards could be used as initial search terms. I'll have to go back and experiment with other names. If this is not a recent change, it could be that the old way is so ingrained in my head that I never thought to try it any other way.

1 comment:

  1. This change was announced several years ago. Prior to the change, you had to enter at least the first three letters of a name before you could use the "*" wildcard. Now, you just have to have three letters. They can be anywhere in the name and do not have to be next to each other. The only other restriction is BOTH the first and last character cannot be the wildcard symbol. For the name "Brushingham" the search term "*r*s*g*" would be illegal for that reason but "b*s*g*" would work, as would "*r*s*g*m".
    http://www.ancestry.com/cs/Satellite?c=Learning_C&childpagename=USLearningCenter%2FLearning_C%2FPageDefault&pagename=LearningWrapper&cid=1265125628231

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