RootsTech 2024 – MyHeritage is ON FIRE with 13 Announcements

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I’ve got to tell you, MyHeritage has outdone themselves.

I had a hard time just keeping track of their announcements, which totaled 13 – a baker’s dozen.

You can watch the MyHeritage RootsTech keynote by Aaron Godfrey, here.

However, there are a few things not in the video, so let’s take a look at a quick summary of what’s new.

DNA Uploads with Free Advanced Tools Forever Extended Until March 10th

MyHeritage just extended their DNA upload that includes ALL ADVANCED TOOLS FOR FREE, forever, to March 10th so click here now to upload every kit you manage. This is a great deal. Hint – new ethnicity results are coming soon and you’ll be saving $29 on each kit you upload.

20+ Billion Records

MyHeritage has just passed the 20 billion record mark and is continuing to add. That’s billion, with a B. These records are available to customers with a MyHeritage subscription. If you don’t have a subscription, you can try a MyHeritage Subscription with a Free Trial, here.,

Additionally, right now, subscriptions are 50% off, but I don’t know how long that price lasts.

I love my MyHeritage subscription, and if you try it and don’t like yours, you can cancel and be charged nothing during the 14-day trial period.

I particularly like that the local newspaper where my grandparents lived is available on MyHeritage, and no place else. In addition, MyHeritage has integrated with FamilySearch, which is digitizing and indexing records like wildfire. That collaboration has provided me with information from European sources, including archives.

MyHeritage Wiki

MyHeritage has been working on their new Wiki, a community encyclopedia for genealogy and DNA, for almost a year now, although it was only recently released.

Photo courtesy of MyHeritage

I’ve been honored to write several articles for the newly announced MyHeritage Wiki, including the definition of DNA itself:

Take a look at the new Wiki, here.

You can filter in a number of ways, and you can even sign up to be a contributor.

Check out their blog article, here.

AI Record Finder

The AI Record Finder is the world’s first AI chat-based search engine for historical records.

I should probably tell you that, at this point in time, I do use AI, such as ChatGPT, very cautiously, and I’m inherently suspicious because AI tools sometimes hallucinate. It’s a new technology with lots of glitches and unknowns, so let’s see how MyHeritage is using this tool. It should be much more reliable since it’s in a controlled environment. I need to be convinced. 😊

The AI Record Finder is under the Research Menu. Just type your question about your ancestor.

I’m cheating and giving MyHeritage a tough one. I typed, “Please tell me about Solomon Ferwerda, who died in 1768 in Groningen, the Netherlands.”

MyHeritage returned three possibilities in their database, including their affiliated databases. One is a MyHeritage tree and two are records from FamilySearch.

Don’t limit yourself at this point.

I happen to know “my” Solomon is the first person, but I played around a bit before selecting the “right” Solomon. Why? Because there’s a lot that I don’t know about his life. It’s possible that the second and third records are ALSO the right person, so be sure to review everything.

Clicking on the middle or right record for Solomon shows that, indeed, this record from FamilySearch comes from the Dutch Archival Indexes, so it’s not “just someone’s tree.”

We do know the Ferwerda family is from Leeuwarden, but we don’t know when Solomon was born, nor if he was married twice. I only have the name of his second wife and one child, Jan, who was born the year he died.

The two FamilySearch Dutch archive records are from Leeuwarden, so maybe, just maybe, I’ve discovered something new about Solomon. How exciting!

I need to click through and check this out further.

I didn’t expect to like this tool, but so far, I really do. But wait – there’s more.

AI Ancestor Bio

You can click to have MyHeritage generate an AI bio of an ancestor for you.

The bio takes a few minutes to generate and will be available for download in the chat and will also be emailed to you. You can easily share with others. Getting other people interested in genealogy often encourages them to take a DNA test. DNA tests are still on sale for $39, here.

Solomon Ferwerda’s AI bio was completed quickly and arrived in pdf format. We know so little about him, I knew it would be short. I must say, I really enjoyed the “Historical Context” section that discussed the surrounding events that would have affected his life. That’s incredibly important and would have or could have influenced the decisions he made. Maybe the warfare and political unrest caused him to move from Leeuwarden to Groningen for some reason, where he died the year his son was born.

Here’s Solomon’s bio.

Here’s a link to the RootsTech lecture about the MyHeritage AI tools by Ran Snir, the VP of Product.

MyHeritage blog links for AI Record finder are here and here.

You can watch Telling Your Family’s Story with MyHeritage’s AI Features by Janna Helshtein at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, here.

I can’t wait to play with the MyHeritage AI tools more.

Updated Ethnicity Coming Soon

This is going to make a lot of people happy!

MyHeritage is in the process of updating their ethnicity results, increasing their regions from 42 to 80, with significantly optimized granularity in Europe. I initially misunderstood and thought the new results were available now, but they won’t arrive until summer.

I understand from talking to a Jewish friend involved in MyHeritage’s R&D effort that their own results are substantially improved and that they have now been placed in Armenia where their ancestors are from. They are no longer generically “Jewish.”

New Profile Pages with Hints

Daniel Horowitz said that everyone calls Smart Matches and Record Matches hints, so now MyHeritage has updated profile pages and is adding them to the profile page and officially calling them Hints.

You can still find Smart Matches and Record Matches listed separately under Discoveries, but on everyone’s profile, they are called Hints.

On Solomon’s profile page, scroll down to view his journey based on the information you’ve entered or accepted into your tree.

I did not yet add Leeuwarden, because I’m yet positive those records in Leewarden are his, but if I had, Leeuwarden would also be shown on his journey map. I’ll be incorporating these into my 52 Ancestors stories. I love maps! Maybe I can find old maps to include too,

You can read more about the new profiles and hints, here.

Tree Collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA

Aaron Godfrey announced tree collaboration with FamilyTreeDNA who pre-announced this at their conference in November.

I don’t have specific details about how it works, as this won’t happen for a few months yet, but FamilyTreeDNA customers will port their trees to MyHeritage which allows them to take advantage of MyHeritage’s record collections and such. Existing MyHeritage customers will simply connect their FamilyTreeDNA test to their MyHeritage tree.

FamilyTreeDNA has never been a “tree” company, so this means that users will have one less tree to maintain independently, and they can augment their research with records from MyHeritage.

I talked to Katy Rowe-Schurwanz, the Product Manager at FamilyTreeDNA to confirm that this is NOT a DNA transfer. FamilyTreeDNA matches still occur in the FamilyTreeDNA database, just like always, and MyHeritage matches still occur in the MyHeritage database. If you want matching in both databases, you still have to upload to or test at both. Only the trees are integrated, meaning when you click on a tree at  FamilyTreeDNA, you’ll see the tree displayed on MyHeritage.

The great news is that FamilyTreeDNA features such as Family Matching (bucketing) where you link your DNA matches at FamilyTreeDNA to their profile cards so that maternal/paternal bucketing occurs will still work the same way. The only difference will be that your tree will actually reside at MyHeritage and not at FamilyTreeDNA.

You’ll be able to enjoy the best of both worlds.

We will know more in a few months, and I’ll provide more details when I have them.

Invite Another MyHeritage User to View Your DNA Results

Aaron Godfrey said in the keynote that 2FA (two-factor authentication) at MyHeritage will become mandatory later this month, and with it, MyHeritage is adding the feature of being able to invite another MyHeritage user to view your DNA results. This allows people to collaborate more easily, especially if a different person is managing someone else’s DNA test.

Reimagine Multi-Photo Scanner App

This photo-scanning innovation is for your phone and allows you to scan photos and entire photo album pages – automatically separating and improving the photos. Then, of course, you just tag them to the proper person in your tree like any other photo.

Oh, and did I mention that Reimagine is free? I expected to have to pay when I downloaded the app, but I didn’t, probably because I have a full subscription.

Based on this article, Reimagine is not meant for other types of images, like pages of text or albums of clipped newspaper articles. But guess what? I downloaded the app, and it works just fine for those items! Hallelujah. How I wish I had this last week at the FamilySearch Library when I was finding pages in books I wanted to associate with a specific ancestor.

If you have album pages of photos to scan, this is golden and integrates with the profiles of people into your MyHeritage tree.

I really, really like the idea of having the ability to scan in the palm of my hand. That way if someone has a photo, you don’t have to try to take a photo of it. Gone are the days of literally dragging a laptop and scanner around with me when I’m traveling – just in case. Yes, I actually did and now I don’t have to anymore.

I cringe to think how many opportunities were lost to me before the days of laptops – but not now.

Thank you – THANK YOU, MyHeritage. What a great gift!

You can find the QR code to download the app, here.

OldNews is New News

MyHeritage has introduced a new website for old newspapers called OldNews which you can find here.

This addition doubles the number of newspapers previously available on MyHeritage.

Users can also subscribe separately to Old News for about $99/year.

MyHeritage customers use their normal credentials to sign in to either site, but accessing newspapers not previously integrated into MyHeritage will require an OldNews subscription too.

I had to try it. I entered my mother’s name.

Look, my Mom had a tonsillectomy. I never knew that. It was just a couple of months after she graduated from high school.

I didn’t know Mom spent the summer in Philadelphia, either. She was 19 at that time, and I had heard rumblings that she studied with a “prima ballerina” at the School of American Ballet. Guess where that is? Yep, Philly.

My Mom was a professional tap and ballet dancer before she became my Mom.

Understanding that Mom spent the summer of 1942 on the east coast sheds new light on this and a few other photos in Mom’s photo album, which I can now scan.

Ok, I can’t help myself. I have to enhance this photo at MyHeritage.

Much better. Another tiny piece of Mom’s life brought into focus.

I wonder what else is in OldNews that I don’t know about. Hmmmm…

You can read about OldNews here.

New All-Inclusive Omni Subscription

MyHeritage is launching a new Omni all-inclusive subscription plan that includes most of the MyHeritage products and tools, except for Filae, unless I’m missing something. Omni reportedly costs less than half the price if you were to subscribe to all of these individually. I’ve asked for a comparison chart which I don’t have yet, but I’m told will be coming soon.

Here’s what’s included:

Additionally, I asked MyHeritage about whether or not the advanced DNA tools are included with Omni, and they are. So, add advanced DNA tools to that list.

The following information about the Omni Plan is a screenshot from the MyHeritage blog article, here.

I have not been able to determine the price of an Omni subscription. At RootsTech, you were interested in the Omni plan, you submitted a Google form and a day or so later, you received this email.

I suspect MyHeritage needs to talk to you because how much it costs initially depends on your existing subscriptions, and how much time is left on those.

I reached out to MyHeritage and asked when Omni will be available to purchase, and the answer is “soon.” You can’t sign up just yet.

I have never subscribed to Legacy Family Tree Webinars, even though I’m a webinar presenter and have several webinars available there. My gift to myself is going to be Omni when it’s available because I want Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and I’d love a subscription to OldNews. I already have a full subscription to MyHeritage, and I’d probably use Geni more than I do as a casual user if I had the Omni subscription.

Artifact Testing – Maybe

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend CEO Gilad Japhet’s RootsTech session because his session and mine were at exactly the same time.

However, I asked Aaron Godfrey after Gilad’s session what I had missed that was not in Aaron’s keynote, other than Gilad’s wonderful stories.

Aaron and others told me that Gilad stated that he was personally submitting personal artifacts, such as stamps, to a third-party lab once again, to test the waters to see if DNA can now be extracted from artifacts successfully.

MyHeritage tried this a few years ago, ultimately unsuccessfully. Perhaps this time will be different, but I would not hold my breath, truthfully. Degraded DNA has quality issues, not to mention that the DNA extracted might not be the DNA of the person expected.

I would personally love this, but I am also skeptical at this point. Kudos to Gilad for trying again with his own personal items.

MyHeritage Online RootsTech Booth

MyHeritage has provided several educational videos in their online RootsTech booth, at this link. Be sure to take advantage of this free resource.

Whew, I’m finally done! I told you that MyHeritage had been very, very busy, and I wasn’t kidding. I hope I didn’t miss anything.

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17 thoughts on “RootsTech 2024 – MyHeritage is ON FIRE with 13 Announcements”

  1. Has anyone else been contacted by MyHeritage to sign up for 5 and 10 year plans at a discount? It was a hard sell and I initially resisted but ended up going for a 5 year plan at a 35% discount. It also allows me to share my account with up to 15 people who can create their own trees, not just view or work with mine. The salesperson also touted some features that I already have, so I wondered if this actually is a new feature or not. Hope I didn’t make a mistake but now I am signed up till 2029.

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      • My husband (been with MH for 10 years) here in UK was also telephoned and offered a 10 year sub at an advantageous rate – due to health issues (plus an 80th birthday imminent) he asked for 5 years which they agreed to.

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  2. “FamilyTreeDNA customers will port their trees to MyHeritage” — that is terrible news. FTDNA trees don’t have a size limit. The MyHeritage Basic plan supposedly has a 250 people limit, but I get a popup saying “Your family tree has 239 people. This exceeds the Basic subscription plan of your family site.”

    I really hope this doesn’t mean I’ll no longer be able to add branches to link new DNA matches at FTDNA. I know MH is a business and exists to make money, but maybe they could give us basics like a tree to link our matches to for free and charge for the bells-and-whistles instead. 🙁

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    • Can’t see any issues with this unless users only have basic (free) Myheritage subscription and also have MH dna.

      Why? becsuse of Tofrs!
      Tofrs rely on trees, if a tree in tofr train of trees goes offline (deleted). People in view of tree will be unknown. Breaking evidence checking.

      If FTDNA users don’t won’t MH subscription, MH basic will accept gedcom uploads, even larger than max basic threshold of 250 persons. Adding new cousin will not be possible directly in MH tree if 250 threshold is surpassed. Deleting tree and reuploadind new gedcom with new cousin(s), and reattaching ftdna matches to new tree is a way to bypass subscription at MH

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      • “Can’t see any issues with this unless users only have basic (free) Myheritage subscription and also have MH dna.” That’s exactly the case I’m talking about so yes, it’s a problem.

        Having to re-upload new GEDCOMS and then reattach all of the known matches every time you discover a new cousin is not a real solution. It would probably also generate a whole round of “new” TOFR notifications for everyone who had a relationship based on the slightly-modified GEDCOM. 🙁

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        • That solution would be untenable and I’m sure that’s not in the hopper. I know both companies are working together for a workable solution for everyone. Based on my understanding, you would ONLY upload a tree to MyHeritage if you don’t have one there already, and after that, you’d simply make changes to that tree. You would not repeatedly upload trees.

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          • Repeatedly uploading trees was Rolf Holte’s suggestion to get around the supposed 250 person limit for Basic members (I say “supposed” because the site keeps saying my 239-person tree is too big). I agree that it’s an untenable solution. But as it stands, I can make additions to my FTDNA tree but not my MH tree, and I’m _really_ hoping they don’t take that away.

  3. I love my Heritage too but I use them to see the results from my previous testing of other Genetics companies and have this tree at 99 people and I have not subscribed yet. Money being as it is but I have to say My Heritage found my Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry that I didn’t know I had nor suspected in Oct 2023 from my raw data on 23and Me and Ancestry.com kits! I had a match there with a man from St Louis Missouri born 1951 like my oldest sister, the year not the place.. But it was his match that I found in 2021 and didn’t check that brought it all out. The people who are our shared ancestors were not practicing Judaism in the 1700’s. His family name is Schleicher. I got a hint when I got back to our common ancestors 6th great grandparents a Johann Schleicher and Eva Elisabetha Spanier, Spanier I knew from my days as a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder. One of my professors in the dance department, Nancy Louise Spanier, was born in Brooklyn Ny in the late 1940’s and her family was Jewish. She was practicing Buddism when I met her in 1975 in the spring semester, 2nd of my freshman year. I began taking modern dance with her.

    At that time we had no way of knowing we were related by blood. But her brother David Spainer married a woman named Jeittle. That name alone made me realize that this couple did practice Judaism and he was the beginning of Nancy’s paternal line. I put her in my tree on ancestry.com after finding my connection to the Schleicher family. It was another line the one from our current county clerk of El Paso County, Colorado a Stephen Schleiker, that made me see somethings. His last name is just using the k to phonetically make the ch “K” sound in German. His grandfather put that in when he moved them here from Germany.

    Stephen and Theodore the cousin match I had on My Heritage turned out to be 8th cousins as Johann from Theodore’s line and the man from Stephen’s line were brothers. The 7th great grandparents were Theodore and Stephen’s common ancestors. my line comes in at the 3rd great grandprents level. Theodore’s 3rd great grandfather Carl Lorenz Schleicher born in early 1800’s came over to St Louis Missouri in 1840. The couple Johann and Eva moved to a German enclave in Russia in the early 1740’s from Hesse, Germany. I thought it was odd. Stephen Schleiker’s line remained in Germany. Eva Elisabeth Spanier’s brother’s line remained in Germany, until the mid 1840’s when they moved to Austria then to America in the early 1900’s.

    Carl Lorenz Scheicher’s little sister Anna Maria, married a Ludwig Gruen in that enclave and had 3 daughters and a son Johann Gruen. ( I write the last name Gruen as I do not have the unlaut key to spell it the modern way.) Johan was born in 1852. I found a document that he came to the US in 1870 working on a ship as a sailor. He went back in 1871 and married a woman of the enclave in 1871. She died in 1884, childless. I thought OK, if Johann was here in 1870 as a sailor working on a ship he had to have come back even though I could find no documentation. But in my tree I have a maternal line of my maternal grandfather Lewis S Jones born 1909 in Savannah, Georgia.
    His grandmother Emmeline Nelson (her maiden name) was born in Savannah in 1862. But in 1890’s she has two daughters, my great grandmother Matilda Louise Nelson and another daughter Amanda.

    They had a father I put in the tree in the 2014 time frame. But as through lines in Ancestry can sometimes show accurately that people you put in the tree can have no matches from others who have tested and I have first cousins from Lewis S Jones who didn’t match this man, I unhooked him from Emmeline and her daughters. But put Johann in his place. Ususally you have to wait some time for ancestry.com to update the thru lines feature. But this day in Oct 2023 they updated it in an hour! all the way back to the 5th great grandparents! and they included my first cousins who tested from my mother’s half sisters on each level!

    I told Stephen Schleiker, because I work part time for the county officially during elections that we could be cousins. I met him in June 2022 when he ran for that office. When ancestry.com updated everything I showed him and gave him permission to show the other office workers from my phone. We are 8th cousins and I am 4th cousin 1 times removed from Theodore Schleicher of St Louis. I ended up being 8th cousins to Nancy Louise Spanier too!

    On of the small family mysteries I grew up with is both parents and paternal grandparents with brown eyes and maternal grandmother brown eyes but my oldest sister and younger brother with eyes whose irises change colors. I knew from college prep high school biology that blue eyes were recessive traits and red hair, green irises too. My paternal grandmother had a full brother who had blue eyes too, George Quivers who I knew growing up in Baltimore Maryland. mostly all her siblings were brown eyed.
    My oldest sister met our maternal grandfather before he died in 1995 and he had the eyes that changed color. But I knew that this recessive trait had to be on both lines for it to manifest in the children. Stephen Schleiker has blue eyes that have blue on the farthest area on the iris then green, then gold nearest the pupils. they do change color but not like my siblings. Finding this was I know a very surface trait called phenotype. But his nose was prominent as was my mother’s. She didn’t get the eyes that change color because my direct maternal line ancestors didn’t carry that trait.

    I did notice the naming pattern only after I had everyone in the tree. Matilda named her son Lewis and he named his son Lewis Jr, my uncle who passed in 1973 when I was in high school here in Colorado. My paternal direct line at the third direct great grandfather was, was a man of Northern Irish descent, named Robert A Hawthorne Jr born in Fairfield , South Carolina. He had red hair and blue eyes. so I saw that trait on my direct paternal line and my paternal grandmother’s immediate family in her brother George. But Matilda Louise, I understood in all this that Emmeline and Johann had a real relationship though she was of African American descent and he German descent. They named her Louise after his father Ludwig. Matilda named her son Lewis after his great grandfather Ludwig.

    Then in Thru lines Ludwig’s sister Sophia married a man named Fischer and their descendants came over to Nebraska, Lincoln was where they settled. I have a DNA match to one of their descendants born in the 1970’s there. Which really was the icing unexpected on the cake of my lines! I think that might be why ancestry put it in so quickly. She was in the database waiting to be matched in my family. The Ashkenazi part came in by DNA matching and then I researched the family names Schleicher, Spanier and Gruen in the Ashkenazi family database, and they all came back as German Ashkenazi families! I did a search much later in Feb 2024 for Holocaust surviros and victims and found people of those last names in Schleicher, Gruen and Spanier. I prayed for all of them though at first I feared I might find something, I plucked up the courage to look and found the answer. IN the eastern Orthodox religion, for the departed they say ‘may their memory be eternal’. nd there is a chant Memory eternal that goes with it. I know in the Hebrew tradition Kaddish is said but because I didn’t know how to do that, reading Gilad’s blog on My Heritage about his family members that perished in the concentration camps, I knew I could used the Orthodox prayer and it would be respected because of the intent of the prayer.

    I am forever grateful to Gilad for creating My Heritage 20 years ago to enrich us all!
    James A Clark Jr
    Colorado Springs. Colorado

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  4. This is really helpful info. I have uploaded my FTDNA autosomal results (5 of them for different family members) to My Heritage and found their DNA tools very helpful. But I have always found Ancestry records easier to search and find. You have written before about which vendors have which features. I wonder whether these My Heritage innovations make them a better prospect for combined DNA-records searching, in your opinion?

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    • Ancestry and MyHeritage operate differently and I think it’s often which site you use most often for searching. Having said that, MyHeritage, between those two, wins hands down with shared matches, triangulation, segment data and the chromosome browser.

      Reply ↓

      • Agree for segment triangulation and chromosome browser, but with their tiny DNA sample base at just 7 million (and a surprisingly large portion of those are uploads from other DNA companies, especially Ancestry and 23andMe), and Ancestry with 26 million, all the kits I’ve worked with get far, far more good strong cM amount matches on Ancestry. Ancestry quite desperately needs the Chromosome segment browser/compare feature! It would be nice if MyH bought out the 23andMe DNA side, since 23andMe had over 16 million tested if I recall correctly. Though it wouldn’t add up as 16M + 7M, since a good amount are 23andMe uploads, it would at least get them within tagging distance. I started on MyH, the Ancestry records are far deeper and extensive, but neither can touch the Family Search non-indexed record images, which is a mountain of pure gold that few have the patience/knowledge to dig into. However, Family Search certainly is lacking in recent records outside of the basic Census and such.

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  5. First, let me say, I have a lot of respect for you and all you do, including keeping me up to date on what’s new and bargains too.
    I am not exactly certain of the price MyHeritage will be offering for Old News or Omni. What I have seen is $30 a month for Old News and an Upgrade from complete that would be abt. $250 a yr.
    MyHeritage has been offering tools along with a raw DNA upload but is not helping those of us who have been with them for years. Maybe I would receive the tools along with Old News at the $30 a month. Cleary, not clear to me.
    And then I read here that some people (not me as yet) are getting offers of good 5-10 year subscription prices. Hey, I almost 80, my husband is older than 80. What is the 35% less subscription price.
    I had always thought MyHeritage had better subscription rates and a more fair across the board selling strategy. I’m not so certain now.
    There are many things I like about research on MyHeritage and use it mostly for European ancestors. I have always had quick and excellent customer service with MyHeritage.
    It is not my intention to have this sound like a rant.

    Reply ↓

    • I don’t yet know about the subscription rate for Old News. Regrading the 5-10 year subscription prices, I had no idea they existed. I suspect, but don’t really know, that MH is doing this based on the “it’s better to have money now than later” strategy. Hence, the discount. I’d suggest that you call them and ask.

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      • Thank you, Roberta. I like your take on this. Smiles.
        I certainly will contact them in the future.

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  6. Thanks for alerting us to the OldNews.com database. Today I also got an email from MyHeritage with a link to try it out, so I did.

    OldNews.com clearly has potential to be a an excellent database.

    I would not myself subscribe to a newspaper database which conceals its contents: exactly what is and what is not in the database. The OldNews search engine leaves all this to guesswork. It does not contain an exact list of what exact issues of what exact newspapers in what exact places the database contains. Until it does, I could not know whether a search turns up blank because a) it was not in a newspaper; b) the newspaper issue was not in the database; c) the newspaper itself was not in the database.

    To be sure the search engine gives me a place to fill in, yet I still cannot know what the database holds for that place.

    The return of results from the search engine as it stands, then, means a) you’re lucky; or b) you’re unlucky.

    Those are not the grounds for a subscription.

    My deep aversion to Ancestry aside, Newspapers.com does supply all that information and allows one to search by all that information. So a researcher can reasonably tell whether the database has covered the bases.

    My Heritage has much to offer. For some reason it stints on its search engines.

    On DNA matches I have given up searching for common surnames, because the search bar returns thousands upon thousands of matches for, say, Johnson. (The cross to bear of Swedish ancestry.) It is just as pointless to search for my mother’s surname Harris.

    For years now I have reported to My Heritage that in searching family trees the spouse information, even when clicked ‘exact’, in no way actually modifies the search; the results returned ignore the spouse and return lots of irrelevant spouses. The spouse blank in the search engine is effectively useless.

    In either of these cases, one has to look for needles in haystacks.

    The generality of the OldNews search engine is the same. I suppose all companies have to make decisions about server capacity. MyHeritage’s decisions about search engines hobble research on its site.

    So I’m not subscribing till I see an effective search engine. I have not joined a newspaper database yet, but, if I do, for these reasons, much to my regret, it will be Newspapers.com.

    Scott Swanson

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