Internet Biographical Collection is Free at Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com recently introduced a new genealogy-specific web search engine, called the Internet Biographical Collection. The service looks great but created a bit of controversy amongst web site owners whose sites were being indexed and cached. Today, Ancestry.com converted the new search engine to a free service, available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike. That conversion to a free service should eliminate most of the concerns.

Users must first register before using this free service, which seems like a trivial issue to me.

You can read Ancestry.com's announcement at http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/?p=1785.

I have used the search engine and found it is rather good. Not perfect, but good. I was able to use the Internet Biographical Collection to find information on several web sites about a number of my ancestors quickly. So far, it hasn't uncovered any new ancestors but I plan to keep trying over the next few days. I suggest you try it at http://ancestry.com. A more direct route is to http://ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1162.

Comments

[Randy Seaver]

The first I heard about this was the folks at www.usgennet.org were upset on Sunday that their web pages had been cached by Ancestry and the pages were behind the Ancestry paywall. Then the genealogy bloggers found out that some blogs were being cached, and they complained.

Ancestry reacted by putting a "View Live Web Site" link on the search result page today, which leads to the actual web page - not the cached version. Then they made the database free today as you noted.

There is still anger in the bloggers and probably some web site masters that their web pages have been "stolen" or "scraped" and put behind the Ancestry "membership" wall (some people won't register).

Obviously, there are potential big issues with this type of "database" - what if everybody excerpted web pages and linked to the pages, especially if they were subscription sites.

There are still legal issues, I think, and Ancestry should explain their legal basis for doing this the way they did it. Without that, it is a black eye for Ancestry.

I blogged about this in the morning at http://randysmusings.blogspot.com/2007/08/ancestrycom-is-caching-some-web-site.html.

[Noneya Business]

For starters, I have been doing genealogy sites on USGenWeb for years. I really think you have some nerve, stealing our hard work and making money off of it when you don't pay us (not even a subscription or a thank you). Further, I don't make everybody that looks at my sites (and I have many) register to look at them, that is none of you business either. Indexing the information is one thing, linking to it is alright too, but to outright swipe it isn't Kosher. We can't even attempt to make a dime on any of the work we do, not even your own affiliation program. I will never trust ancestry.com again, add your link to any of my pages (I am removing them and they are on at least 15 of my sites and I won't recommend you to another soul. You say you are testing the free Biographical Collection, I just wonder how long that will last.

Noneya Business

[Still Upset]

The Point is not where the have now put it. They have pillaged our hard work and made it part of "their" works. Whether it is paid or unpaid, they have violated a ethical code among genealogist.

How better to weed out competition that provides free service than to take all of their work and place it with your site. Am I the only one that thinks this smells and sounds like a familiar childhood game? Can one say MONOPOLOY....... ?????

Look at it in these terms, if you own a construction company and you go take all of xyz's customer lists, tools, etc., what do you thinks gonna happen, ? they will fold up their tents and go home ?

Ain't gonna happen here baby.... We in for the long haul, so take our websites down and put up work that you pay people to put together from original documents (like we had to do, we had to pay for those books, those copies, we had to spend thousands of hours getting blisters on our fingers and rears to get this information online).

Now do we have to watch closely to make sure our stuff does not start appearing in different formats in different databases without our entire pages being displayed and with no credits to that???????

One also has to wonder if the marriage, death, obits, census, etc. etc. won't be the next "Internet Collection" to go up.

" If Ma Bell could not have a monopoly why should they? "

[Gerald Eberwein]

Why did any of us post our hard work to free sites. For others to see. I applaud Ancestry for making the information free. I also support their request for persons to register before accessing the free data. It serves a means to shut down automatic electronic data mining. (A process where a computer accesses a database and obtains all the data in a directory or file and then uses it to spit out other material.)

Ancestry didn't steal anything. All they did was create a search engine that goes out and finds things of particular interest for others. Then they get the item for them. The only thing they did was put it behind their door. A process that is done all the time. How many Societies have libraries and you gotta' pay to get in the door. What's the diference. How many Public Libraries require you to have a "Library Card" to use the facility? The card is free but you have to register for it. What's the difference. Their name isn't Ancestry.com.

So let's not bash Ancestry too much when they do something that is good and make it free. I agree some of their marketing tactics approach being shady or shoddy (whichever you prefer) and need fixing. But, that's another matter. Let's bask in the light this new effort brings to our quest and take advantage of it often.

[Wanda]

I just clicked on the link in the first "comment" here to see what this collection was like, and got this message: "Check Back Soon
We're sorry but search. is temporarily unavailable. We are undergoing routine maintenance or we may be experiencing unexpected technical problems. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask for your patience as we work to correct the situation. Check back with us shortly."
I then went to a "basic" search on Ancestry and it worked fine. Kind of strange-usually when "search" goes down in Ancestry it's for all searches. But then, maybe there were too many people trying to access it. Who knows...maybe I'll try later, maybe not.

[Dennis]

Did you folks get so angry when Google indexed your sites--and then all of the other search engines? Did you demand that they "delist" them?

I assume that you put information on a free site so that others can find and use it. But how do they find it? Normally, by using a search engine.

I find Ancestry.com's search engine provides fewer, but cleaner, hits, so I am thankful for it. I also check the Live Feed and use it to wander around the various sites. I'd think at least some of the site owners would be grateful that they are now getting more attention from their most desired audience.

It's a good thing.

[Dick Eastman]

One comment: the so-called "pillaging" and "theft" and all the other words are a bit strange. There is nothing new here. I don't recall anyone complaining about Google, Yahoo, Dogpile and all the other search engines. Yet they have been doing exactly the same thing for years, only on a bigger scale. The general-purpose search engines index and cache ALL the web sites. There are even a number of for-pay search engines that perform specialized searches for paying customers only. NorthernLights.com is one such for-pay search engine. Again, NorthernLights.com has been charging customers for specialized web searches for years.

Ancestry.com's Internet Biographical Collection is a much smaller search engine: it is also a specialized search engine as it only indexes what it believes to be genealogy-related pages. It is designed to make genealogy information much easier to find, regardless of where it is hosted on the web.

I don't see any difference between Ancestry.com and all the other free and for-pay search engines. They all do the same things.

As always, if you do not want search engines to index your site, create a ROBOTS.TXT file with the proper parameters and place that file on your web site. That is easy to do. Then the search engines will not add your site to their databases.

Of course, your site will be a lonely place as users will no longer be able to find you by using search engines.

- Dick Eastman

[Callawegian]

Many, many individuals have chosen to make the fruits of their labors available on the web as free historical/genealogical information. Those individuals have chosen to make this information in the manner in which they have. They also had the choice (or not) to make the same information available to Ancestry.com. Had they wished to have this free information available on a for pay basis (remember WorldConnect-OneWorldTree) they would have chosen Ancestry.com. They did not. Now Ancestry.com has spidered websites on a nation-wide scale without the knowledge and consent of the owners and copyright holders of that information and make it available (free for now?) on a paid site in which the user must register to search for information and to have it displayed from a cache on Ancestry.com servers. If they choose to remove the information from the web, it will still be displayed from a cache on Ancestry.com servers. Ancestry.com has so far overstepped the bounds of decency and law, this is no longer a copyright issue, it shold be turned over to the Dept. of Justice for investigation and action.

[Becky Wiseman]

Legal or not, by initially charging for content created by other people Ancestry has not endeared themselves to many members of the genealogical community. I want people to find my webpages. I want people to use that information. I'm not going to "take it down" or install a robots.txt file to prohibit them or any other search engine from providing links to my site. That would be stupid and defeat the purpose of publishing it in the first place. The problem I had was that the pages, as they were first displayed, were made to appear as though they were content on Ancestry.com and the link to the "live" page was not obvious. The description that Ancestry provides for this "database" is misleading and the url for the web page is not displayed anywhere within the context of the detail for the "hit" which still makes it appear as though it is their content. A big blunder on Ancestry's part. Sure. Am I going to cancel my subscription? Probably Not.

[Happy Dae]

At this hour, the search engine IS working: quite well, in fact. So apart from the ethics issues, I find myself grateful for another fine tool. I would wish for a more advanced input criteria form, however, especially for those of us researching more common names. And it is NOT a complete database. Is there such a thing? I searched for Melzar Canright (how's that for uncommon?) and received ZERO results. Keep collecting, Ancestry, there's more out there.

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm

[Marsanne Petty]

I may be the rarity here, but I would love for my site to be listed on ancestry.com. That would mean that more people would have access to it. As it stands now, it takes a few days for my new pages and information to hit the search engines, and then people only get to my site if they search for particular words - or so it seems from my point (I am able to view the searches that lead to my page). Do I want my page to be behind a fee based site? No - that's not fair to me or those who want to see my page. Do I want it listed on ancestry for free? Absolutely - that gives me a chance to share my info with more people.

As for this comment from above: "If they choose to remove the information from the web, it will still be displayed from a cache on Ancestry.com servers." Any person can have a cache of a site - it does not have to be a major entity. For instance, when I leave this page, there is a cache file on my computer that will come up if I go to the file. So if Mr. Eastman were to delete his page today, I could still view it tomorrow, the next day or weeks from now, as long as I haven't cleared my cache files. Just because one removes info from the web doesn't mean that it is gone from everyone - just those that have not yet viewed it.

[David Watkin]

Dick, theft is a pretty accurate description of what Ancestry.com have done here.

This is not the same as Google indexing a site for their search engine. When you do a Google search, they show you the URL of the site and, when you click on the link in the search result, it takes you to the original site.

Ancestry makes a complete copy of your website and takes people to the cached copy by default. They show it on a page with Ancestry.com headers, in its entirety. While facts can not be copyrighted, the textual presentation of those facts can. Ancestry ignores this by showing potentially copyrighted works, in their entirety, with the consent of the copyright holders. Finally, their source for the database does not credit the original website in any way, making it look like the data was generated by Ancestry.

Finally, it is also "theft" in the sense that they are stealing traffic from the original website. Any advertising, or revenue generating content, placed on the original website after they spidered the site will not be present in the cache. By not directing traffic back to the originator, they are stealing the potential revenue dollars from the creator of the data.

[Shawshank Redemption]

Ductm are you deliberately being obtuse?
I understand now why you claim "straight talk"; everything you post is either a press release or crooked as hell.

[Penny Hayes]

Since they have now placed all this in the free section and added a link to the live sites, I feel a little better.

However, Ancestry.com has a lot to learn from Google, et al. Ancestry's search results are still appalling and result in the inclusion of totally nonsensical "matches" through which one must scroll to find any truly pertinent ones.

I feel like a broken record complaining to Ancestry about their lack of good search engines and a way to use Boolean searches. Efficient searches would be the best news ever for those of us who break down and actually pay this company to access information.

Penny

[Bev Anderson]

As the years pass, I am becoming increasingly disturbed with the trend toward corporatizing (aka "privatizing") public documents and public functions, not to mention the exorbitant fees charged for private or corporate profits from public documents. I do not understand why our public documents have been turned over to Ancestry, nor why Ancestry uses our public data for their corporate gain (and this whole thing about passwords and registration is sheer nonsense). I'm for taking corporations out of the loop when it comes to publishing images or transcriptions of public documents that we've already paid for with our tax dollars.

Public documents are public documents, whether on a local, state, or federal level. They are not now, nor were they ever, private documents intended for private corporations to gain a private profit. Remember, the information genealogy researchers want was freely given to local, state, and federal agencies at one time (census data was given freely, for instance, even if it won't be made public until 72 years after it was obtained), and we all pay taxes so that people at those governmental agencies can keep our records straight and/or look up and copy those documents for us (but we pay a fee to public agencies to obtain copies of those documents, even if it's for/about us). Our tax dollars pay the salaries of public employees - I don't object to that; everyone needs to earn a living and good public servants more than amply deserve their salaries, and some are woefully underpaid (I was once a public employee, albeit in a different field). Our tax dollars also go toward building and maintaining the locations where those documents are stored and employees work. We pay for the maintenance and safekeeping of those public documents through our tax dollars on a local, state, or federal level, in other words.

I strenuously object when private corporations (like Ancestry.com and others) use our public documents for private gain. If our tax dollars were spent to host a free public web site where we could obtain those same documents (local, state, or federal level) after a name search on a flexible search engine and/or the ability to scroll through microfilm images, I would not object, although like census documents there needs to be a cutoff date for privacy purposes. (I was not pleased when a friend who just got a one-month trial membership at Ancestry found my birth data recently from the state index; since I was born after 1930, this crosses boundaries where identity theft could become an issue. Prior to that, I was unaware that Ancestry had any birth data on me or anyone else of my generation in their database because I'm not a member of their web site; I think Ancestry's fees are outrageous, and other friends have been very inconvenienced when Ancestry has charged their credit cards without authorization.)

My shining example of "how to do things right" for hosting a free public web site for public documents or transcribed data from public records with a flexible search engine ('starts with' option is necessary because of multiple alternate spellings with local dialects) remains Norway. There are two sections for the Digitalarkivet web site. One section is for transcribed data (census, emigration, other transcribed records), and the newest additions are the microfilm images of church records one may scroll through (.jpg images can be downloaded) which should be completed by sometime next year (privacy cutoff date in the 1930s for microfilm images). Digitalarkivet updates their web site with new data at least weekly. No registration, no passwords. One just goes to the Digitalarkivet web site and selects English for the language and then chooses the section in which one needs to search (records are in Norwegian, of course, as is the transcribed data, but column headers and search criteria are displayed in English for transcribed data if one has selected the English language option).

Denmark is a close second and their information is also free, search criteria and column headers can also be displayed in English, but they have two web sites; one for transcribed census and emigration data, and the second web site has microfilm images of church records one may scroll through (registration and password required, but it's free). I'm more familiar with the Norwegian Digitalarkivet web site because once I documented my family I expanded and started researching data for people who married into my maternal and paternal families, and most of them had Norwegian ancestors, so I do research on their web site weekly, if not daily. In many cases, including my own Norwegian lineage, I've been able to document genealogies clear back to the 1600s. The only "cost" is the time investment involved with searching and entering the data in my genealogy program.

In other words, people in other countries grasp the concept of 'public' documents for genealogy purposes, and display them as 'public' documents (not for profit of corporations who use 'public' documents for private or corporate profits). The closest any government web site has in the US to what I consider good use of public tax money is the BLM web site where images of Land Grants can be viewed and downloaded for free.

Otherwise, here in the US the only time I can find public documents or transcriptions of public documents is when generous and selfless volunteers have gone to the trouble to add information to a few trusted genealogy web sites where the information can be obtained. I symbolically bow in humble gratitude at their feet every time I find accurate transcribed or image data online that has been put there by volunteers; after documenting thousands of people in my own genealogy research (and sharing it on my web sites, along with links back to the information I find online if I haven't transcribed it from microfilm images or other documents I obtained years ago), I know how difficult it can be to make sure data is as accurate as humanly possible.

For Ancestry.com to cache or otherwise use freely available public data from other web sites as their own (whether "free" or for a fee, and only with registration and passwords) is at least unethical, if not illegal. The rest of us who have genealogy web sites where we freely publish our genealogy data that we've obtained with lots of hard work (sometimes lots of money in a few cases) over many decades - with sources listed - become marginalized on a Google search, and Ancestry.com or other web sites who are only seeking profits become the top listing on search engines. That takes all the fun out of a very enjoyable avocation and the purpose of freely sharing genealogy data in the first place.

[Clay Nenno]

The comment was made that Google does not cache web pages. This is not true. Although the primary link for each Google search citation is to the actual web page, at the bottom right of each citation is a link to the cached page. I have often used the cached page when the original page is not available for some reason. Also, for a large or complex page, the cached version has an advantage since the words in the search criteria are clearly highlighted.

[Noname]

Dick wrote: " Ancestry.com's Internet Biographical Collection is a much smaller search engine: it only indexes what it believes to be genealogy-related pages."
There are many things other than genealogical content contained in the "Collections" of ancestry
Try putting in the first three letters of a forbidden word and see what you get. If "it" believes that is genealogy related, then their filters are not any good.
Unlike the normal search engines which pull up the cached page from the last spidering only this one is not a search engine, a search engine was used to create this "Collections", the search part of it is only to search and index what has been cached on their servers where code has been added to private pages by way of a no responsibilty dislclaimer.

[Jennie Vertrees]

I have mixed feelings about Ancestry.com's pirating other programs for information. I've done lots and lots of research in original records. I was new to genealogical research, when the wonderful 1880 census was opened to the public. Now, we have the censuses up to and including the 1930 census available to us. I spent a lot of time typing letters and sending letters before the days of computers as we know them today. The first computers I ever saw weighed several tons each and reached almost from floor to ceiling and had small boards, which were "wired." The company, where I worked, paid IBM $1,000 a month rent for each of these machines and then had to hire one person, whose sole job was to "wire the boards." I still prefer looking in the original records in a state and then copying those records. I never opened a website for myself, for the very reason I didn't want it pirated. I will gladly share information with anyone and do so appreciate all, who have shared information with me. When I share information I give my source, so that that person can double check my data. ALWAYS check the original source of any information you receive from another person or from a website. There are rare times, when one has to accept preponderance of evidence, as there is no one source with all the data you feel you need for that person.

[Laura]

Public records are public records. We can still get them the "free" way, just not always while sitting at our computers.

[Concetta]

Dick,

The problem with creating a robots.txt file is that I don't want my data picked up by Ancestry.com or NorthernLights.com. I don't mind other search engines picking it up. To specifically block it, however, you need to know the name of their spider.

For example, Google's spider is called "Googlebot", and if you don't want your site picked up by Google, then you write an exclusion for it.

So, as a person of some stature in the genealogy community, can you ask Ancestry.com on your readers behalf to give us the name of their spider so we can CHOOSE whether or not to be a part of this database?

[JINNY COLLINS]

In answer to Bev's comments: Yes, the documents, birth certificates, marriage licenses, death certificates - are free, possibly, IF you go get them yourself. But, IF you contact my local genealogical society, by phone or website, for a copy of a local death certificate, you will have to donate dollars to have someone go get it for you! - not for the document itself. Ancestry is just "getting it for you", so I don't think your analogy fits. Ancestry pays thousands, or maybe millions, who knows, for all the 'stuff' they do to keep that site running. You can go find all the censuses on record - if you know where to go, and how to look - but, how nice to sit at a home-office and see them all for a 'click'? It is marvelous! The amount I pay yearly is nothing compared to my getting to Salt Lake City, staying in a hotel, buying meals and more... This doesn't address the issue of "stealing" one's web work. However, I'm curious about those who put up their "work" on a free site! If it's really your hobby and you're trying to find an extended family, what better way than to have a the biggest genealogy site in the world point people in YOUR direction! Just a thought...

[Ginny in Poughkeepsie]

All I have to say is that Ancestry must be getting desperate to enter into such sleazy operations. One day they will meet their match - what goes around comes around.

The only reason I subscribe to Ancestry is for their Census and its search capabilities and in order to have the Census and its research capabilites I have to buy the whole US package.

Ancestry should stick to what it is good at and stop trying to be a glutton - in the long run I believe they will do themselves in. There are ways around them but do the novices they suck into membership realize this? It seems Ancestry wants to suck in novices before they get cyber-wise - Let the buyer beware!

Footnote.Com is a great site - constantly growing - with lower fees to join and much better viewing capabilites for original documents archived by NARA to cite just one example.

Why couldn't Ancestry just provide links to the Live Web Pages without uploading Cached images?

[Dick Eastman]

Of course, the Wayback Machine caches web pages for YEARS! You can see your old web pages at http://www.archive.org

Again, hundreds of web sites do exactly the same thing that Ancestry.com does. Some of them, such as NorthernLights.com, even charge money to access their specialized searches. Some of them are significantly more expensive than an Ancestry.com subscription.

- Dick Eastman

[Ronda]

I'd like to make a comment on this discussion as I've subscribed to this newsletter for free (thank you Mr. Eastman for providing this!) and also subscribe to Ancestry with a full membership since 2000.
I realize there are many who have gone before me and worked very hard without compensation to record and make available records that I have accessed and incorporated into my family file without my acknowledgement or thanks, to which I would now like to do publicly, although it comes up short as those folks may not ever read this. Kind of like the many hours of my own research on my family! So with this discussion I must stop and ask myself at any point along the way, why am I doing this, am I being compensated (how does working pretty hard for free and without a thank you or compensation make me feel, REALLY??)I know that if it weren't for the internet, or Ancestry or now footnote I wouldn't have ANY interest or participation let alone data. For this I am very truly grateful, and hopefully the work I have done will someday provide another with this marvelous experience I've had over the last 7 years or so. And that's my best attempt at essentially a selfless act of giving which I perceive this study to really be. And if all of the above bothers me, well I'll quit and take "MY" data offline. I guess I just don't see it as "MINE". But I can understand how a person could see it that way. But is it really? Great discussion and I enjoy it. Thanks again for providing the space for it!

[Caroline Gurney]

It beats me why anyone should want to use this new Ancestry database when they have Google.

[Irked]

What gives with Ancestry's greed? How desperate are these people?

I have had a full subscription for many years. Despite the high price, I consider it a good value. But I am disgusted by their latest information grabs at Usgen.net and NEHGS.

This morning in my brief time on Ancestry, I was forced to watch ads from Qwest, Discover Card, Alamo, Weight Watchers, XM Radio, Texas state travel guide, DHL, Ford, and Mercury. Most of the ads have flashing pictures or text that make it hard to copy down the search results.

For this I pay the full subscription price?

Where is all the money going at Ancestry? Bigger houses for the executives? Fancy cars?

Can't wait to see what's next!!!

[Oxa]

Irked wrote: "This morning in my brief time on Ancestry, I was forced to watch ads from Qwest, Discover Card, Alamo, Weight Watchers, XM Radio, Texas state travel guide, DHL, Ford, and Mercury. Most of the ads have flashing pictures or text that make it hard to copy down the search results."

Use the Firefox browser with the Adblock Plus add-on. Blocks those pesky, distracting ads that slow down your computer.

(I have no interest, financial or otherwise, in either Firefox or Adblock Plus.)

[Irked]

Oxa,

Done. Thank you for sharing the information!

But I do not understand why Ancestry shows ads to customers paying $300 a year. It just seems wrong.

[Susan Kitchens]

@Concetta (10:59am) -- In my post on the subject, I researched the MyFamilyBot robot and wrote out (in rudimentary terms) how to exclude ONLY their bot. It's technically doable.

Post address: http://familyoralhistory.us/news/view/ancestrycom_scrapes_websites/

[Dona]

Look to the right side of this webpage...see some ads? Everyone, including lots of genealogists whose personal pages are online, contract with companies to place their ads on their websites to help ameliorate the cost of keeping their websites online (server space, domain names, goodies, etc.). It's business. It would be nice if we didn't have to look at billboards or sort through the tons of ads in the Sunday newspapers, but we've learned to ignore those, haven't we? Ancestry's an easy target, being the big guy in the field, but the rest of us should not automatically condemn them each time they go for a new resource and place it where we can find it--and especially not when they make it free!

[Chuck]

All one has to do is mention 'Ancestry' and the idiots come out from under their rocks. I'll bet their grandma hid her money in the mattress because she was afraid of someone stealing her 'fortune'.

Uninformed paranoia at best. Just glad these anti-Ancestry types aren't in MY family tree!

[Dara]

I pay $300 annually for my Ancestry subscription. One could argue that my money helps Ancestry provide their free databases to non-subscribers. I have no problem with Ancestry displaying ads to non-subscribers. But why should I be forced to see them?

I do not mind the ads on this website or on many others. I pay Dick Eastman what I consider to be a very low fee each year, so I do not mind his unobtrusive ads. Further, he does not subject us to ads for cabinetry, weight loss programs, and rental cars.

You are comparing apples and oranges.

[Betty]

I have been feeling frustrated and alone in my angst regarding Ancestry.com's greedy grabbing of everyone's information. I am delighted that the Eastman Newsletter gave me a place to listen to what others have to say.

My work on my genelogical history has been a very personal discovery. I am fleshing out my ancestors as a way of honoring them and the memory of my mother. This is very different then studying and laying out the history of the civil war or other forms of historical data. Of course people are upset about Ancestry's dealings. Genealogy is personal! Someone posted a picture of my greatgrandmother without my permission. I know how she would feel having this picture put on the internet. She was a very private person. I am very careful to respect another person's privacy even if it is someone who lived 50 years ago.

The biggest problem with Ancestry's "Free" site is it will not be free for long. In the not too distant future they will slam the door. This is their history.

So,now those of us who want to remain in control of our ancestry must taken the logical steps to protect the information. Genealogy has become a huge business.Itwas only a matter of time that someone would take our records and try to make money off them. We need to stay cool and go to war!

[Happy Dae]

A very lively discussion with more opinions than I have fully documented ancestors. The REAL test comes when Ancestry spiders, caches and displays genealogical information taken from World Vital Records, Footnote and other competitive concerns. THEN we'll see how deep the waters run. Will it happen? Not in my short lifetime...or yours. If it is on the web for free access, then it is open to such practices that Ancestry engages in.

What? Because it is free, doesn't mean it isn't copyrighted? This is true. But which David among you has the money to take on the genealogical Goliath and his army of attorneys?

FAIR is for God and children. Life isn't. It was hard to learn, even harder to teach.

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm

[L G Greene]

As one of the original subscribers to Ancestry.com, I began by referring everyone I knew to it. Now, I am pretty discouraged with the course this company seems to be taking.

For example, those who subscribed to the US records database now find when they try to access such records as "the Irish in America", or Scottish, etc., they must upgrade to the World Deluxe to access the records, even though those records are of US citizens. Calls to the powers that be, emails, postings on their message boards are all to no avail.

As coordinator of a large network of volunteers responsible for placing historical records of a county in western NY online (free of charge), I am concerned about the ethics of a company that will not respond to its customers, a company that keeps changing the "rules of the game". Admittedly the information Ancestry provides to its subscribers is terrific, but when the expense is to support what I feel are questionable business practices, it is up to each person to decide if it is worth the cost.

[Gene Veritas]

If you want a very good genealogy-specific Internet search engine, try the one at WeRelate.org. When you go there, click on the "Web" tab in the upper right-hand part of the screen. It is infinitely better than the so-called Internet search engine that Ancestry is trying to pass off.

[Pat Walker]

Ancestry comment

Ancestry's gobbling of Rootsweb was a most unfortunate event in genealogical internet history. I had a tree posted on Rootsweb WorldConnect. Someone decided to purloin portions of my tree and insert them into their tree (even though they had no relationship to these individuals) WITHOUT the source citations I had on my site. I asked them politely to please include the source citations and keep the data updated or to remove it. They chose not to, so I had the option of ADDING POSTEM notes to their site to each individual they had purloined to explain the error in the data, lack of source citation and lack of reference to my site as the original.

ANCESTRY TOOK THEIR DATA into their site WITHOUT THE POSTEM NOTES. So, now incorrect, unsourced, unreferenced data was being proliferated on the internet--also when I posted my data with Rootsweb it was to be without cost. However, Ancestry was charging for this as it appeared in One world Tree. Shame on Ancestry.

I communicated with them and they finally removed the tree. My only other option would have been to remove mine from Rootsweb, but I needed it there to show correct data and sources vs those purloined by an unscrupulous researcher. AT LEAST ROOTS WEB HAS THE POSTEM NOTES to show the errors and omissions on the purloined site.

ANCESTRY HAS NOT MIGRATED THE POSTEM ADDONS for the individuals. They are promulgating JUNK GENEALOGY.

SHAME ON ANCESTRY.

SHAME ON GENERATIONS NETWORK.

I am very concerned about them gobbling up Relative Genetics and would warn anyone doing DNA testing to investigate very thoroughly the process, the data generation, etc.

I would add to the above commentor that ANCESTRY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LDS. Quite the opposite--other than employing LDS and having subscribers who are LDS, I know that they pulled their subscription from LDS Family History Centers and left only a limited version of the subscription, so I don't believe they share very many of LDS Church's philosophies on Family History--very much the opposite. Their main goal seems to be greed, greed, greed. SHAME ON ANCESTRY/GENERATIONS NETWORK.

[Amanuensis]

So why does WeRelate.org get a free pass for its caching? In what way is the WeRelate engine better? The website states that 25% of its results are known to be for nongenealogical websites. The website also notes that the crawling was all done in 2006, so results will be dated. Finally, and most importantly, because WeRelate.org does not have an option to display the cached site, WeRelate is useless for seeing information on a website that no longer exists. The ability to see web caches is an ESSENTIAL feature of any legitiate search engine.

The creation of genealogy-focused search engines has been predicted since at least 1999 http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=1124 so I am very happy to see that they are finally starting to arrive. I WANT to find information about ancestors no matter where it is located. Since I don't care that Google makes money from content I create, it would certainly be hypocritical of me to complain about Ancestry.com joining the party. And for those who do care, create a robots.txt file. I am still waiting for anyone to post saying that their content was crawled CONTRARY to a robots.txt file. The silence is deafening.

[Amanuensis]

As Chris Dunham, aka The Genealogue notes on his blog, it has been known for over a year that Ancestry.com had spiders loose on the Internet. Here is a link to Chris' original post from last year. http://www.genealogue.com/2006/10/ancestrycom-has-biography-bot.html

In that post from LAST YEAR, Chris included a link to a page ON THE ANCESTRY.COM WEBSITE clearly explaining that Ancestry.com was crawling the web, AND CLEARLY EXPLAINING WHAT PEOPLE NEEDED TO DO TO OPT OUT! So for over a year, people have had the oportunity to create a robots.txt script for their website. Here is a link to the page on the Ancestry.com website that Chris blogged about LAST YEAR!
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/bot.aspx

Quoting from that page:
What is MyFamilyBot? Why is it accessing my files?:
MyFamily is creating an index based on a powerful person-based biographical ranking engine that gives superior results over searches done using the more general purpose internet search engines. Ancestry.com indexes the biographic text and provides a search service that points users back to the originating website.

MyFamilyBot is the name of a web crawler (a.k.a. robot, spider) used by MyFamily.com [now The Generations Network] to find biographical text on the internet in connection with this engine. The crawler works by deeply crawling sites that contain biographical text. We have constructed the bot to limit its affect on site usage to be within the range of that of the large commercial search engines. Sites that do not contain biographical text are examined in a superficial manner.

How do I prevent MyFamilyBot from crawling my site?
MyFamilyBot supports the internet standard protocols for restricting spiders from crawling web sites. These protocols are described here:
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html

How can I contact someone concerning MyFamilyBot?
Please send questions and concerns about MyFamilyBot to SearchBot@MyFamilyInc.com.

[W. David Samuelsen]

Internet Biographic Collection had been removed from Ancestry.com for time being.

There were plenty of problems with it already as it was.

[Ginny in Poughkeepsie]

It's still there and searchable as an "Unknown" database - searched it using my e-mail address and got results or just try "Smith"

http://www.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1162

They haven't removed it - just renamed it to Unknown.

Source Information:
Ancestry.com. Internet Biographical Collection [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2007. Original data: Biographical info taken from various English web sites. See specific website address provided with each entry.
About Unknown

This database contains a sampling of biographical sketches found on English language web pages throughout the entire World Wide Web. Web pages can vary greatly in the amount of information they contain about a given person, and in the number of related and unrelated people mentioned on the same page. The information source and the central topic of each page will also vary greatly. Given facts should be verified using other sources. One unique and valuable feature of this web-based collection is the number of hyperlinks leading from each page in the collection to other web pages of possible interest on related topics.

It's like Abe Lincoln said:
You can fool some of the people all of the time!
Some of the people all of the time!
However, you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

[Jane]

Have totally enjoyed the discussion. Great minds here. Now, is it me, or is the database no longer working? Second to the last post (Ginny in Poughkeepsie) contained a link, which takes me to the "Unknown" database, but as of this hour I get the same message regardless of the name I insert. Check back later...

The rest of Ancestry seems fine.

Too much flak? Did the stuff hit the fan? Crazy... as the last poster, Paul, said. Could've been great. Wish I had learned of it sooner.

[Sharon]

I first looked at the Ancestry.com Internet Biographical Collection 30 minutes ago, typed in a surname and received a page of information, I clicked on one "view" and promptly got an error message. The same happened with the other 9 records displayed. I signed out and started the process all over again with the same surname, this time the whole site seemed to be down.

I have registered with Ancestry but I would NEVER pay the high price they ask for a years subscription as the information they provide is useless to me at this time.

If Ancestry can provide free access to other websites then I feel it is worth being registered with them as I find it very time consuming searching the web with all the search engines available and half the time even they turn up a heap of rubbish.

[Cari T]

Have just (7am PST Thur 30 Aug 07) tried this "Unknown" database search on Ancestry.
Rec'd same message: "Check Back Soon We're sorry but search is temporarily unavailable. We are undergoing routine maintenance or we may be experiencing unexpected technical problems ..."
I immediately clicked on my server's "Refresh" button, and up popped the results of my search.
It's an effective strategy, for me, anytime that "Check back" message appears; at the least it's worth a try.

[ralph]

Dick,

The problem with telling people that they can just block the MyFamilyBot spider is that not everyone has the ability to do that. If you have your own domain, it's a simple matter to add the following code to robots.txt at the root level of your site:

User-agent: MyFamilyBot
Disallow: /

That still lets Googlebot and whatever other search engines you want to index your site in, while blocking Ancestry's spider. Wonderful.

But if you don't control the root of your domain? You have a pretty nasty choice.

You can include a meta tag in each of your files saying that you don't want search engines to index your site:

META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"

(You'll have to include the angle brackets yourself; the commenting system here eats them.)

That will prevent any spider that honors the robot exclusion protocol from indexing your site. MyFamilyBot, GoogleBot, GeorgesBot, whatever. But there is no way to limit that exclusion to a single bot. You either ban all bots, or you ban none. Host your genealogy blog on blogspot.com or wordpress.com? You're screwed. Sorry.

[Linda]

As one who has spent 10 years putting more than half a million FREE files (many original!) online for genealogy researchers, I am outraged by this move by Ancestry.com to KEEP copies of our files and offer them on their site.

As the Ancestry.com person wrote, "We cached individual Web pages in an effort to preserve history - if a Web page featuring important family history information were taken down in the future, a cached version would still be available."

They have no right to ROB us of the right to decide the fatre of our files!

Please read my statement here: http://www.lindapages.com/stealingfiles.htm

[Amanuensis]

Linda, I did read the page that you linked to. You obviously have the right to your opinion, but the language you used to express it was outrageous! You do not have the right to be making libelous accusations. If I was an Ancestry attorney, I would be contemplating filing a lawsuit against you for reckless defamation.

[Jasia]

Think about this Dick. Let's say Ancestry.com had a way to cache your "premium" newsletter and post it in their database with their header on it. Knowing that folks could read for free that which you charge for would no doubt outrage you. Now take a look at how many genealogy blogs and web sites have Google Ads, Amazon.com affiliate links, click thru ads to WVR or Footnote.com and who count on traffic to their sites to help support the continued hosting of their sites. Then ask yourself this... If it were your "premium" newsletter that Ancestry was using would you still think this is no big deal? If they put a link to your site under the one to their cached page, would that make it OK with you? If they made it free (with registration) instead of making it available to subscribers only, would that make you feel better about them having your pages cached?

If after thinking about things this way you still think this is no big deal, then may I suggest you offer your archive of "premium" newsletters to Ancestry? I'm sure they'd be happy to create a database just for you! What the heck, it's no different than Google is it? Oh wait, you only allow the teaser paragraphs of your "premium" articles to get listed with Google. It can't be that you want to protect your income could it?

[Genie Ragan]

Wow!
Seems the folks who want everything for free just hate Ancestry.com. Those of us who value the info and ease of finding it, don't mind paying, and in turn subscribe to Ancestry.
Now, how many of those with the FREE websites, posting FREE data are using the Rootsweb FREE sites to post that data, which is provided to them FREE by whom? Ummm....could that be Ancestry?
I live on the West Coast, all my family is on the East Coast. Without making a trip costing thousands of dollars, or writing to individual agencies and spending money for copies, how do I obtain all this FREE data/documents? I can watch the forums on Genealogy.com, Rootsweb, GenWeb etc, which are all FREELY supported/provided by Ancestry and hopefully someone will post what I need. And I can waste months or even years going to all the FREE individual websites for information, which may or may not even be accurate. Do I want to waste my all this time? NO! And that's not to mention the fact that I would have "stolen" this information from the person who posted it if I put it in my database.
If people do not want any of their precious data to be used or "stolen" by others, then it should not be posted anywhere. I am a firm believer in giving credit where it is due, but c'mon people! I thought the whole idea behind setting up a family tree or genealogy website was for sharing.....or am I crazy thinking sharing is good?
I have a website that I pay for, out of my own pocket, posting data that I paid for out of my pocket by way of ordering documents and my annual subscription to Ancestry. The website also includes some info that kind "cousins" have sent to me free. The one thing I've noticed is that the people who write to me for help, usually want me to look up records/documents using my Ancestry subscription to email to them for FREE. And would you believe I rarely ever even get a "Thanks for sending the census image" email back from them or any info on their family? No one ever offers to send me anything to help support the website, in the form of money. They don't return family information either. It seems they only take from those who are willing to give. We call these people "USERS" or "FREELOADERS".
I have a few "cousins" who send new/corrected data, photos, document images etc. and share whatever they have. They rarely ask for any help, because they have their own paid subscriptions to Ancestry or Genealogy.com. or whatever.
How many times have I had someone tell me "I don't subscribe to Ancestry....it's not worth it to me!" Then they want me (and others) to look stuff up for them, on where else? You got it...Ancestry.com! Go figger. Call me stupid, but I think I'm missing something here.
Also, it is not LDS, Ancestry or any other genealogy SITE that is promulgating incorrect information on the web. It's the idiots who find a family tree, copy it, don't verify anything, add it to their family tree and then post it again, with the inaccurate data, on the internet. Anyone with even half a brain knows any data taken from a family tree or a website (other than actual documents) should be carefully examined and verified before assuming it is correct. We ALL know what happens when we 'assume'!
Thank you, Dick Eastman for allowing us to have our say. I for one am grateful for Ancestry and the others for all the work they have done gathering all the images (and making them VIEWABLE!) and the other information they provide, and commend them for all the work that goes into what they have done. For that, I am willing to overlook the adds in the sidebar, which can be ignored or explored, and the few mistakes in judgement they may have made. I'm also willing pay for their service, which has allowed me to do in 8 years what probably would have taken close to 20 years otherwise.
One other side note....if a person puts family information on a website as a "memorial" to a long lost relative (and doesn't intend it to be shared with others) what is the point in putting it on the internet to begin with? Do they have computers in the afterlife that the relative will be able to see it? Why not put it all in a binder and tuck it away where no one will see it? Then you could maybe have it put in your own coffin and hopefully end up in the same place with your deceased relative and give it to them personally.
Attn Users & Freeloaders, don't write asking me to look up something for you on my Ancestry subscription. Go find a site where you can look up your family in an index, click on a link and instantly get an image for free, by yourself. Then could you send me a copy for free?

[Amanuensis]

Amen, Genie Ragan. My mother used to tell me that a whole lot more would get done in this world if we cared less about who got the credit for it. After what I have seen and read this week on various websites and blogs, I have to say that I believe that many people in the genealogical community care more about who gets the credit than they do about the greater good.

[Howard Metcalfe]

Interesting. Ancestry went to court to stop people from downloading and reposting census records. But then they did virtually the same thing for other people's info. What am I missing here? Two-faced Janus?

[Jett]

I would have to say If this were just a search, just an index then yes it would be beneficial and added value. That would be beneficial to me, as are the links from google or any other search engine, but to cache the pages and keep people essentially from going to the other sites, is not right, those original sites then receive no benefit.
google cashes my page and indexes it but google does not charge me or make ayone register to use it, yes it does cache pages, but that is a secondary value not the first, the first goal is to get you to go to my site. not keep you from my site, as Ancestry's version did.

From a web commerce point of view I can look at it this way, all that content and pages that others have written will now benefit Ancestry.com in their Search Engine results ( SEO or search enginge optimization), it will also give them an edge for their advertisements and pay per click ad campaingns. To steal another site and place that site on your site is done and stopped often in ecommerce sites.

I am glad they removed it, I hope it does not return.

[Joy Rich]

Amanuensis's "signature" links to http://www.apgen.org/directory/search_detail.html?mbr_id=820, the entry for a professional genealogist named Chad Milliner.

I googled "chad milliner." The first result is a listing for Chad Milliner on zoominfo. It says that Chad Milliner is a Content Specialist for THE GENERATIONS NETWORK, aka MYFAMILY.COM aka ANCESTRY.COM!

[Steven]

I tried to log on to view this "free" collection but Ancestry is trying to nail me for membership...from what I can see, it's not free

[Linda Merle]

What's the difference between google caching a website and Ancestry? Google funds development of its search engine via ads. So Ancestry funds its with subscriptions.

All my 'cousins' have been snitching my hard work for decades and not crediting me... at least with Ancestry, my name is still there.

I think ya all need more prozak

[Bill Buchanan]

I used to be a major detractor of Ancestry.com, I really didn't see the value to it.

But in the last few years most of my breakthroughs have come through Ancestry.com's US and British census records, Ancestry.ca's Ontario birth and marriage and death records, and a posting on Genforum that allowed me to reconnect with a branch of the family that we have been out of touch with for 150 years.

Yes, the records are public records, but Ancestry.com has obviously spent a huge fortune indexing them.

I do some indexing for www.familysearch.indexing.org I recently read that it took the LDS 18 years to index the 1880 census, and with better technology and a much larger number of volunteers they expect to index the 1900 census in 18 months. Then I think that Ancestry has all of the released US censuses available, plus a lot of other US records, the 1851 Canada census, the British (England and Wales) censuses for 1841-1901, and probably many other records. That is a tremendous set of resources that they have paid to make available to us. I hope they recover their expenses.

I was sorry to see the end of the free access to Ancestry.com at Family History Centers. I can understand that the new owners of Ancestry.com were hoping that the FHCs would pay a significant amount of money for a continuation of that service. It was obviously not the only wrong assumption they have made. We can hope that TGN are learning from their mistakes and will continue to invest in services that are of value to the genealogical community.

I have no connection with TGN/Ancestry.com other than my free membership in GenForum. :-)

[pursebearer]

There are no longer any free databases on ancestry, after you join you get free access to a few databases for a few days only. Then you must pay.