I believe that apart from the unique "look" of pages on free BMD, a very minor matter, that site offers the most useful and consistent search of the gro indexes, at least where the coverage is complete, so not for recent records after the fifties. One reason is the multiple keying of entries (allowing mistakes to be picked up), and a strict adherence to what is actually in the index, whether it is full middle names or not. No information has been added or taken away. Even the page numbers are validated, in the sense that if a page has been transcribed honestly as "353" when the range of pages for that reg district is (say) 841-866, this is highlighted. In that example a possible correct reference is 853 or 858. It is just a pity that some of the source images were poor - making such errors possible - although there is no guarantee that fmp or ancestry wont have similar but different mistakes. Results can be manipulated in ways that fmp or ancestry ones just cannot be, AND: IT IS FREE TO USE. btw i am sure that transcription of records not so far done is still under way, so in the same way as my late wife did, consider volunteering to transcribe a page or several. Details are on the web site http://www.freebmd.org.uk/Signup.html Dave Beakhust On 5 May 2014 15:35:54 "Peter at LostCousins" <peter@lostcousins.com> wrote: > > Personally I find I have a greater success with Ancestry and records > > that I find there do not show on FMP, either the old system or the > > new! I don't have a subscription to FMP, I only buy credits as and > > when I think I've found something. My subscription to Ancestry has > > certainly proved worthwhile. > > The fact that site B doesn't have all the records that you found at site A doesn't make site A > better - indeed, it tells you little or nothing about which site is best. Ancestry and findmypast > have largely different record sets, and so it's inevitable that many records found at one site won't > be found at the other. > > It's not a question of which site is better, but which site has the record sets most relevant to your > research - and inevitably most of us end up needing to use both sites. > > There are overlaps, of course - the most obvious being the censuses and the GRO indexes. > > Searching the census by address currently doesn't work as well at the new findmypast site as it > did at the old one - but then Ancestry doesn't even offer searching by address. On the other > hand I like being able to search using the parents' forenames, a feature that Ancestry offers and > findmypast doesn't (but then nor did they at the old site). > > Ancestry's GRO index search is inconvenient because of the split at 1915, the poor way in which > it handles middle names which may or may not be shown in full, sloppy transcriptions in the early > 20th century, and ridiculous allocation of registration districts to counties. Except for a death > search with a precise birth date I'd use FreeBMD or findmypast ahead of Ancestry. > > But the simple fact is: researchers tend to prefer the site they're most familiar with, whether or > not it's actually 'better' than the alternatives. That's why so many of us got annoyed when > Ancestry, FamilySearch, and then findmypast revamped their sites! > > Peter > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to SOG-UK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message