Ancestry.com is aware of the problem. I sent a specific search test for them to work on. It's probably a fouled-up SQL database search command. Ancestry's reply: ----------------- Thank you for your email. We apologize for any confusion. We are currently addressing the search result issues you are experiencing in the Historical Newspapers Collection. The inconvenience is a temporary situation and hopefully will be corrected shortly. In the meantime, we suggest using the keyword field to search for the name, instead of using the first and last name fields. Your patience in this matter is appreciated. Original message follows: ------------------------- Description: The Rootsweb Gen-Comp-Tips forum is noticing that Ancestry.com searches appear to be borked. Too few or too many hits. I just searched for surname Raehl in the newspaper collection and found nothing. Yet I know Walter Raehl appeared about 24 times in the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern (Wisconsin), several months ago. James Raehl (me) appeared 3 times. What is going on? Ron Bestrom wrote: > I just tried to use Ancestry.com to do a search and found they have changed the results system. They must have gone to a totally Soundex system because I was getting THOUSANDS of returns even for my own name, to include "Baxter, William R." > > If you use Ancestry.Com and also find the new system really sucks and makes it impossible to look for a name...COMPLAIN as I did. I've had great success in the past using this system...but not now. > > Ron Bestrom (Not "Baxter, William R")