A search for Nazaire Drollette (no date of birth and first name set to “exact, sounds like and similar” and last name set the same way) pulled up 25 results in the “All Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection)” at Ancestry.com today.
The sorting of the results is confusing. The first four results are for Nazaire Theriault or very similarly spelled names. Then comes and entry for Nazaire Drolet. It would seem that results with surnames of Drolet, Drollette, Drollete, etc. would come before results with the last name of Theriault. I understand that the names “sound similar.” That’s not the issue. The issue is how the results are sorted. That makes no sense to me.
It’s also frustrating that I’m unable to sort my results in any way at all.
Nazaire is set to Exact, sounds like and similar–note the position of the slider.
And there’s another area of confusion. The search parameters on the first and last name are set the same. But the “sliders” on the search filter box are not in the same position. It would seem that the slider should be in the same spot since the search parameters are the same.
I realize that there are other ways to search for this name in the database. That’s not really the point. The search results should be sorted in a way that I can figure out. The search sliders should be in the same place since
Drollette is set to Exact, sounds like and similar–note the position of the slider.
they are set in the same way as well.
And my usual philosophy is: “if the results confuse me and appear in some random fashion—what else might not be working correctly that I simply can’t notice?”
Always be thinking about the search results you get from any database. See if what you get matches what you expect to get. Some searches will turn up no results–that’s the way it is. But what you get should make sense.
