Reference Centre, Planning, Website Review
Ancestry.com 
Ancestry.com has undergone many changes in layout, design and offerings over the years since its debut in 1997. Essentially, however, the site continues to have the same original problems and has further compounded some of those problems by continually attempting to re-design its search facility.
Ancestry.com, the nemesis of many a trusting researcher who has fallen into the "free trial" period only to discover that extracting oneself comes after much effort. How then, can I possibly see my way clear to award a 2 gold shield standard? These marks have been gained solely due to the bulk of the content and the clarity of that content. Ease of navigation and free databases that are offered on this website have been eroded over the years.
Interestingly, the free search results differ in no material manner than the search results that are returned if a subscription had been purchased, the only difference arises in the "lock" icons becoming unlocked. Inasmuch as Ancestry.com does not operate on a reductive credit system, having to search each item individually on the search results page creates no hardship and results in no devaluation of the subscription fee.
Concerning content, Ancestry.com has lost three gold shields (out of a possible 5) for persisting in adding donated and otherwise privately completed family lineages to their list of subscription resources. Under no circumstance is it appropriate for any company to market for its own private gain donated and privately completed family lineages. Even Burke's time-trodden tomes are known to contain blatant and deliberate errors in lineages. How then, can a modern company, in all good consciousness and corporate responsibility, flog a product that is likely rife with errors to those who are largely novices and amateurs. In my estimation, this is just one more avenue through which the genealogy world at large will continue to perpetuate the already inaccurate genealogy that is pervasive on the internet. Familysearch.org makes it clear that donated and privately completed family lineages found via its' portal need to be verified in original sources. Ancestry.com makes no similar assertion concerning its World Family Trees. Shame on you, Ancestry.com for continuning to take profits in the form of subscription fees through donated material.
Aside from donated and privately-completed family lineages, which, according to the corporate information posted on the website represents "users have created more than 70 million family trees to the core Ancestry websites", the remainder of the content found on Ancestry.com is not new, nor is it proprietary to Ancestry.com. What that entity has accomplished, however, is to facilitate the easy and convenient access to many different types of records. Amongst those different types of records are secondary and tertiary transcripts. So, I have to caution anyone who takes information found on Ancestry.com either in the form of records and most particularly in the guise of ancestry "hints": unless every link in your lineage has been proven from at least two primary sources and you have viewed and retained copies of the actual documents, your efforts will have resulted only in an ancestry comprised of hearsay and, if produced under the Ancestry.com website guidance, is likely to be fatally flawed. I shudder to think how many of those 70 million trees contain fatal flaws that even more unsuspecting novices will continue to perpetuate on into the future. Ancestry.com LLC has, no doubt, projected current and future profits that it could manufacture from repackaging those fatally flawed trees into other offerings on the existing and new web sites. For examples, of fatally flawed trees found on Ancestry.com visit our Errors in Published Genealogies page.
Although I will not discourage a researcher from purchasing a subscription to Ancestry.com, I will not encourage such action, either. Subscriptions to online research services that ultimately provide links to original resources - census and other primary and secondary sources - can be a great benefit to those who are unable to attend at a research facility. A great many people fall into this category, not only those who are housebound but also those who are geographically-bound - live too far away from a library or research facility to be able to justify a trip. Ancestry.com has to be given due praise for bringing to market original images of many primary and secondary sources.
The downside to online subscriptions comes in the form of exaggerated subscription fees. Yes, a reasonable fee has to be charged by the data provider to cover the costs of acquisition of resources, technical experts and service providers for producing and maintaining the online resources and website presence, and to pay all corporate expenses, fixed, overhead and otherwise, and still provide a modest profit or ROI (return on investment) to the shareholders. But the key here is the "modest" profit. Genealogy has become a hobby in which the demand for tools has outstripped supply of those tools and too many opportunists have taken this as a signal for potentially unlimited high returns. On Ancestry's corporate page they proudly announce that they now have over $1,000,000,000 in profit with "Over 1 billion user-generated photos, scanned documents and written stories" and "More than 3 million paying subscribers and over 131 million family trees on Ancestry". That's an enormous profit on the backs of information that has been contributed to them. Free of charge!
You might be shocked to learn that Ancestry.com, LLC, in their posted first quarter results of 2015 have,
"Total revenues for the first quarter 2015 were $164.6 million compared to $153.6 million in the first quarter of 2014 driven by growth in revenues from the Company's AncestryDNA product and its core Ancestry websites."
Today, according to Zippia's data science team, "Ancestry US Holdings Inc's annual revenue is $310.0M. The following key financial metrics about Ancestry US Holdings Inc was discovered after extensive research and analysis.
- Ancestry US Holdings Inc has 1,000 employees, and the revenue per employee ratio is $310,000.
Ancestry.com has an absurd subscription fee structure. Differing levels of subscription are offered for separate resources - for the U.S. records collection, for the U.K. records collection and for a combined records collection. Having monitored messages on many genealogy mailing lists concerning the difficult and in some cases, impossible, suspension of an Ancestry.com subscription, I have to provide a warning to anyone who is contemplating the purchase of a subscription. When your subscription period is close to an end, provide written notice to Ancestry.com of your intention to NOT renew the subscription. Also write to your credit card company advising them to not accept any further credit charges from Ancestry.com, Ancestry.com, LLC, or any of its affiliated companies. This is good advice that should be heeded regardless of to what subscription service one is subscribed.
Before locking yourself into an Ancestry.com subscription carefully read through its rather extensive and concise list of databases. To view an alphabetical listing of databases you first have to click on the link at the bottom of the homepage "All Records" in the middle column. Once the new page opens click on the link to 'Search' button in the top navigation bar and then click on the 'Card Catalogue' option. With the aid of the filter options provided in the left-hand column on the new page you can select which country, time period, language and type of record you are seeking. To find only records produced in one of the countries of the United Kingdom you first have to filter the records by country by clicking on the 'Europe' option. Then, scroll down the new list of countries until you come to United Kingdom. Clicking on that last option will open another filter list of the individual countries - Scotland, England, Wales and so on. If you are looking for a particular county in England, clicking on 'England' in the filter list will open yet another filter list of counties from which you can choose the desired county. Once you achieve a listing of the records in which you are interested you can further sort those record titles alphabetically, if desired by clicking in the link box at the top-right hand side of the record listing titled "Sort By".
I also have to address the "free trial" period offered by Ancestry.com. The word "free" means that a 'thing' is not restricted, impeded or confined in any manner whatsoever, that the 'thing' is clear of any obstructions and exempt of any impositions, monetary or otherwise. Consequently, any "free trial" that requires the conveyance of credit card billing information is not "free" at all. I put forward a challenge to Ancestry.com and to all other subscription services offering so-called "free" trial periods: Make those trial periods truly free! If your product and service provides a real value to the tester, then that tester will likely purchase your product. Perhaps not at that very moment, but, certainly, at some time in the future.
It also appears to me that Ancestry.com is also guilty of disseminating mis-information by omission of information. Any Family Search Centre that has an internet account also has the "Institution" free subscription to Ancestry.com. So, Ancestry.com is now fully and freely searchable at a Family Search Centre as well as at many public libraries around the world. I believe that if Ancestry.com, as a service to its more frugal customers, published that fact on their website, that that information would not really have any significant impact overall on their financial bottom line. I believe that it would, rather, engender a sense in those customers that Ancestry.com is really interested first with the customers success in research. Nothing in business goes farther to produce continued success than to demonstrate a real interest in one's customers and in fulfilling their needs.
I care so little for the "Customize your homepage" options that I have never bothered to change the landing page to anything other than what is presented as the default page and contains the most pertinent selection categories to me - the default Search box, My Quick Links, What's Happening at Ancestry (which is the listing of the latest records posted), Recent Activity, which includes my recent searches, and My Shoebox, which contains the records that I have saved but not yet added to my family tree.
Lastly, I cannot recommend against anyone using a particular genealogical research service over another - to each his own. However, I would like to highlight the new fees for any professional research carried out by Ancestry's ProGenealogists. Prices and categories are straight from the website, I quote,
"Genealogy Research... includes DNA analysis (if available)... starts as low as USD $3,500 for 20 hours of research."
"Citizenship Research... We help you begin your European Union citizenship and passport application in the country of your ancestors... USD$4,375 for 25 hours of research."
"Lineage Society Membership... We can perform the required research and guide you through the process of applying for membership... USD$7,000 USD for 40 hours of research"
This USD$3,500.00 fee, and the other two fees, translate into $175.00 per hour for research. Outrageous! The average hard-working genealogist charges between USD$20.00 and USD$50.00 per hour. However, those genealogists do not necessarily have the budget, know how or time to be manning a one-person-driven social media marketing campaign to drive traffic to their website and to convince interested parties that their services are just as worthy, if not more comprehensive, than those offered by this bloated service.
Their book publishing options are equally as outrageously priced. Again, from their website, I quote,
"Family Narrative... includes up to 20 photographs... starts as low as $5,800 USD, plus printing"
"Family History Book... up to 100 family photographs... starts as low as $30,000 USD, plus printing"
"Children's Book... the story of a patriot ancestor who fought in one of America’s wars... starts as low as $6,125 USD, plus printing"
We at Ancestry Solutions are able to offer any customer or research client the option of creating and printing any family history book, for children or adults, at a much more reasonable price. Our fee, if we are to produce the book, is CAD$540 plus not more than CAD$50.00 per book for 100 pages and with perfect binding and coated colour cover. There is a 10-book minimum number of books that can be printed on any print run. But, all totalled, the cost is approximately CAD$1,000.00 plus shipping and taxes. Of course, if you supply us with a finished book in PDF format, the only charges our customers and clients pay are for the actually printing, shipping, and taxes.
Ancestry's Genetic Research Package starts as low as USD$4,550. Ouch! No number of hours of research is given for this price. So, buyer beware!
Ancestry Academy is not available to non-subscribers. What is offered to non-subscribers is very basic, general information about genealogy and how to start a family tree. But, the link to get to that information isn't anywhere on the home page. Clicking on the link for "Genealogy" at the bottom of the home page will produce a new page that has "Explore" in the top menu. Hoovering your mouse over that link will produce a drop-down menu, the first item of which is "e;Genealogy101". Clicking on that link opens up the page titled "Curiosity Cennter" where the basic tutorials can be found. Also under the "Explore" menu are several other options that lead to short videos and to the Ancestry Blog. It's a shame that Ancestry hasn't seen fit to put a link to their "e;Explore"e; offerings front and centre on their homepage.
There are many things I find reprehensible in this world and U.S. corporate greed ranks very close to the top of my list. Or, perhaps, Ancestry.com is just suffering from an over-inflated sense of self-worth!
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