October has been a bust — according to the catalog a drought month for new Ancestry collections. The most recent update posted, UK, Historical Photographs and Prints, 1704-1989, was originally published on 26 March 2018 and updated on 29 September. You have to go back further to find a completely new collection.
By contrast Findmypast adds things each week. MyHeritage added 6 new databases in October and updated 10 others, not counting the updates contributed to family trees. I posted twice during October about additions to The Genealogist. FamilySearch lists 73 new or updated titles.
Ancestry's corporate website shows other signs of lethargy. There's only a single press release in 2018, the appointment of a new CEO. That compares to more than 10 in preceding years. Posts on the news section of the corporate site dried up at the end of June whereas there were two and usually more per month earlier in the year.
Is Ancestry running out of stream — resting on its laurels as still the largest genealogy database and with its large DNA client base?
4 comments:
Yes
Ran out of steam when they switched from documents to DNA test kits as their primary source of $$$. Too often the site doesn't work and updating a tree might take more than one day. Things just don't work there all the time. Their source citations are laughable. No one would ever find the original from their citation.
ANCESTRY ran out of quality work a long time ago. Time and again I have looked at records transcribed incorrectly from the original: the place name Gravenhurst has shown up in transcriptions of Census docs, birth and death records with more misspelled versions than there are letters in the alphabet. Why do I keep paying the big bucks to belong? Because I find so many family postings there related to my research. But quality? Never!
Something is happening at Ancestry that is disturbing to a long time user. Response time has been poor for months and I am beginning to see ‘404’ messages for the first time ever. Recently, I have found that I have to log off in order to proceed with adding things. It’s frustrating
on a site that many of us depend on.
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