11,709
edits
FamilySearch Places: Difference between revisions
→Search by place name
| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
Simply entering the name of a place in the search field initiates a “type-ahead” search. Potential results appear after a few characters have been typed. A user may continue typing to refine this set of potential places. At any time, the user may click one of the suggested places to examine its details page.<br> | Simply entering the name of a place in the search field initiates a “type-ahead” search. Potential results appear after a few characters have been typed. A user may continue typing to refine this set of potential places. At any time, the user may click one of the suggested places to examine its details page.<br> | ||
[[File:Places 1.png|300px]] | [[File:Places 1.png|300px]] | ||
Clicking Enter on the keyboard or selecting Show More Results completes a search using the entered text. Search results appear both in a list on the left side of the screen, ordered by their calculated relevance to the search terms, and as points on the map. | |||
Commas are used to separate levels of description; for example: village, county, state, country. | |||
===Special characters=== | |||
Wildcard characters can be used to adjust search terms. | |||
:::? - replaces any single letter/character in a place name, allowing any possible letter to appear in its place. For example, entering “Sm?rna” will display both Smyrna and Smirna among the valid results. <br> | |||
:::* - used at the end of a string of letters to allow for various endings of any length. For example, to search for any place names that begin with “Rock” in Illinois, enter “Rock*, Illinois.”<br> | |||
In addition to these wildcard functions, FamilySearch Places supports a fuzzy search. Users may request a fuzzy search by placing ~ immediately after the desired fuzzy search term. For example: “Cincinati~, Ohio” returns Cincinnati, Ohio, while “Cincinati, Ohio” fails.<br> | |||
==Search by id== | |||
If a user happens to know the unique identifier (id) of a place in FamilySearch Places, that id may be entered in the search field, hit enter and go right to the corresponding details page. For example, if I knew the id for Ohio County, Virginia I could enter it (“393653”) into the Search field. (Note: It may be easier to simply enter “Ohio, VA”).<br> | |||
This same result can be accomplished by adding “?focusedId=393653” to the end of the base URL for FamilySearch Places. For example, entering https://www.familysearch.org/research/places/?focusedId=393653 into a browser’s address bar also returns Ohio County, Virginia.<br> | |||
==Search by location== | |||
It is possible to initiate a search by clicking a spot on the map. Once a location has been clicked, a window pops up requesting a distance from the specified point over which to conduct the search.<br> | |||
The distance may be entered in miles or kilometers.<br> | |||
[[File:Places 2.png|300px]] | |||
[[Category:Sandbox]] | [[Category:Sandbox]] | ||