Issue 13.15
On Tuesday, December 23rd FamilySearch released a new update of the hinting data viewable on an ancestor’s detail page and in the descendancy view in the Family Tree. In this data update newly added or changed persons in the Family Tree have been hinted using all the newly available information. It also includes important new record sets, such as the Find-A-Grave collection, that have been recently published. Additionally, engineers and architects have made numerous advancements in the software algorithms which make it possible for more than 14 million new hints to be identified. Users of the Family Tree may wish to visit their ancestor pages again and see if any new hints are displayed.
I love the hints. If you have a few minutes, pick one of your families and start looking at each individual. Click the Record Hints to see if they are a match to your ancestor. Then you can add the hint as a source. You can find new information, update missing information, and find new people as you go because you are comparing the data in your family to the Historical Records in FamilySearch. These are the records made possible by FamilySearch Indexing. The Record Hints work together with the indexed records to find links in Family Tree.
People are really adding sources, even during the week of Christmas a new record was set when over a million sources were attached. FamilySearch is as excited as the users are about the accuracy and efficiency that these new tools provide, both in the task of doing research, as well as the quality of the information found in the Family Tree. Users are setting new daily highs in the number of sources they have attached to the Family Tree and the number of new persons added to the tree from historical records. With this vast number of daily additions to the Family Tree tied to historical documents, the Family Tree is becoming one of the largest and most accurate genealogical trees in the world.
The new tools enable many new people to become engaged in family history work. Try the new tools at familysearch.org/tree.