Issues Searching Trees

Do you wish that everyone who took a DNA test had a tree attached going back to at least their grandparents? Do you ever search public member trees hoping to find a cousin with the family Bible or family photographs? I have a lot of family photographs, documents and even a Bible that I want to share with family members. I have a public member tree and I want others to be able to find my tree.

As I discovered yesterday, the vast majority of my tree may now be found. However, there are parts of my tree that still aren't indexed. Randy Seaver reminded me of this possibility in his reply to my comment on his blog, Has Ancestry.com Indexed Ancestry Member Trees Yet. It appears that the entire tree isn't indexed. Instead only individuals with Ancestry.com sources are indexed.

In order to verify this, I had to go to a section of my tree where I had not worked the Ancestry hints. I selected the John Minnick family to test this theory. My Heartland Genealogy tree contains Ancestry sources for John Minnick.

Finally Indexed! But ?

Due to my husband's fight with pneumonia, I have been away from genealogy for a couple of weeks. This evening, I decided to see if my tree would show up in a search of public member trees. (See Ancestry Indexing Update from Aug 2018)

To my surprise, my tree, Heartland Genealogy, appeared in the results.

Still Not Indexed

Do you search public member trees for hints?

Do you search public member trees to try and connect with others researching your ancestor?

If so, did you realize that only trees with Ancestry sources attached to the tree will appear in the list of results? It doesn't matter how many other sources are attached, the tree won't appear in the search results.

Did you also realize that any trees created since October 10, 2017 won't appear in the list of results. That means that the search results won't contain trees created by DNA testers in the last year.

I have no idea how many public trees are hidden because of the lack of an updated index. However, I do know that my Heartland Genealogy tree is one of those that is hidden.

I would love for others to be able to find my tree.