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The trouble is the searches don’t work properly! Limiting a search by a keyword actually adds more records! And switching on/off name variants has no effect!

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your feedback. I’ve passed it on to our technical team who are taking a look…we’re keen to make all the improvements we can to give you the best possible experience of searching the newspapers!

Thanks,

Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)

Hi,

On a few of the pages I have managed to download a couple have downloaded the wrong page.It is the correct page in the window pane but when I click on to download it seems to be downloading the wrong page .Also on searches .I have put in a name and it seems to pick up the first name and second name in seperate searches as well as together .Also sometimes when I click on a page a blank page comes up and none of the searches are shown.Hope it helps with sorting out some of the teething problems .Well done though.

I can’t find the article that was in the Aberdeen Journal in 1877 about my great-great-grandfather George Gordon Benzies in 1877, I have a copy from Aberdeen Library, so I know it exists. I think the refined search needs to be much tighter, i.e. if you put in both names then they should search on both names together and not on each so if you type in George you don’t get Mr or Mrs George as well, as has been said the more you refine the more you get!. In addition the areas of the UK to check are odd, Grampian (north-east Scotland) is followed by north-east England rather than geographical.

This new addition would be great if it actually worked! The searches thus far have been virtually impossible. Even if one gets as far as finding search results – which is extremely rare as the site seems to be suffering from overload, which doesn’t appear to have been catered for when these records were made live, downloading an actual image just doesn’t happen. The page just hangs in my experience. Eventually a stock “we are experiencing a large number of searches” type message flashes up and one has to start all over again. I renewed my annual subscription (not cheap) specifically for these records. I would expect a significantly better service than this. Please sort it out quickly.

Hello Tina, David and Graham,

Thanks to all of you for your feedback – I’ve passed it on to our team who are looking into it. We’re definitely keen to make as many improvements as possible so we really appreciate you all getting in touch.

Watch this space!

Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)

I have the same issue as someone above. On one of the pages I have downloaded to PDF, page 5 is correctly shown in the browser and the story correctly highlighted but when downloaded to PDF it was page 4 that was saved. Also there appears to be no ‘report a problem with this image’ button as there is for census and BMD images.

Congratulations on providing a great resource – I’ve already found lots of information.

Another issue noticed is that the shows beyond the pages returned – clicking these returns an empty page list. E.g. 39 results over 4 pages, page numbers show all of the way up to 8.

Also is there a way to drill down to a publication and browse through issues?

Great to have these records available but why every time I try to move through to the next page of search results do I lose the filter I’ve set up?

I have found all the same issues as the users above. Searches are either wrong or filtered incorrectly, transcription summaries are so poor that you are unable to tell if an article contains the information you are looking for before you pay to view it, filters are lost when changing page on results, search results cannot be ordered by date, incorrect pages download.. the list goes on and on. As we are using credits for viewing these documents I wonder how many users will be out of pocket as a result of this?
But take a look at britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (a separate site but also run by brightsolid who run findmypast) and at least some of the above problems do not appear. Strange, hmm?
It would be have been better for findmypast to offer a short free access period and get customer feedback to overcome any “teething troubles” rather than expect members to act as beta testers whilst paying for the privilege! Yet another reason not to renew, I’m afraid.

Ok. Working a bit better now, thank you – however, a REALLY annoying problem is that when one clicks on a link to an article, occasionally the page displayed isn’t the correct one. It does not at present appear possible to use the “previous page”, “next page” or “download image” buttons once the image appears in the frame. Once the image displays – on my ipad, at any rate, the whole page just sticks, and touching the screen only makes the image move about, but the buttons don’t function. This is frustrating enough as a subscriber – but I’d be mightily fed up if I were paying per image. I also agree with previous comments that the information given in the search results often seems to be the kind of gobbledygook one gets when using bad OCR software. Again this is not so ad if one is a subscriber, but if I were paying per image I would be VERY reluctant to download an image on the strength of some of the garbled “information” given in the search results. Definitely needs sorting!

Thanks very much for the feedback everyone – rest assured we’re taking all of it on board. Let us know if you spot anything else!

Thanks,

Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)

The concept is brilliant. However the execution is awful.
As previous posters have said, filters do not work, i.e. the check box does not happen and once the first page of filtered results are moved to ‘Next’ the filter no longer is valid. Also sometime refining a search term says there are a number of results but none are shown. Looks like you are pointing to pages that no longer fit the revised search term. Adding a first name to reduce the number of results simply returnes more! Seems to operate using ‘OR’ rather than ‘AND’. Keeps throwing me back to a login page every now and then. Have been unable to download an page image. Instead have used screen copy. Takes a long time to display the newspaper page image. Keep getting overload messages!

Like i said, a good addition if it only worked!

Also, I wish you had a way to edit these comments so I could correct the typo’s!

Agree with David. When I’m searching for William Taylor in Bath (as a key word), I’m getting William OR Taylor OR Bath (thousands of results). What I should get is William AND Taylor AND Bath. This effectively means that I am reduced to searching specific years for specific events, rather than being able to look for the unexpected. On the British Newspaper site, I could at least look for “William Taylor”, rather than William OR Taylor. Anyone searching for a common name like this is quite effectively prevented by your search protocol at present!

And searching with a wild card doesn’t seem to produce good results either – and pre-1800 most of the s’s were printed (and have been recognised by the character recognition programme) as f’s. If I could use * reliably, that’s one search, not two or more!

At the moment until this is sorted out I have found the best way – indeed the only way – to actually download an image is to go to the search result and press the “download page” button quickly before the image begins to appear in the frame – otherwise you can forget it! Of course this is of no use to those who are paying per view as obviously the image may not actually be what they are hoping for.

Is there some way to select multiple filters, e.g., a list of certain newspapers?
It only seems possible to select one filter parameter at a time.

Not really sure who to thank but I just found my mums brother after 65 yrs! She is 83 and he is 69…..he was 4 yrs old the last time she saw him. I will be meeting him in a few months time…….THANK YOU!!!!!!

Thank you for the new addition to the site.

A problem I have found is that although the search boxes are labelled first name and surname searches they are in fact word searches, so if your name means something else, as mine does, a surname search for Alderman gets thousands of incorrect results. Adding a first name to refine the search does not work as previous comments above show.

Mari

Hi all,

Thanks for your comments and feedback – we’ll be making improvements to our newspapers search over the coming weeks so do keep checking back.

Thanks,

Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)

Renewed specifically just for this but so far have been unable to download a single image (notwithstanding reasonably fast 30Mb broadband) and searches suffer from all of the errors highlighted above. Surely after the collaboration to provide these with the British Newspaper Archive and their (BNA) initial problems, the same (if not worse) problems should not occur again? It also seems that we are going to be subject to the standard, restrictive, searches that FMP provide for their record sets. I hope they get themselves sorted soon and offer what they advertise. They also need to either scan at better quality, or with better OCR software, as the results are often unintelligible. Using Trove, the FREE Australian newspaper archive the results (even where people haven’t submitted corrections) are generally FAR better and the quality of newsprint can’t be blamed. I’m a subscriber so (apart from almost £100) it doesn’t cost me anything extra to look at any image but it takes so long. If I were paying by pay-per-view I’d be taking them to task to refund me and get Trading Standards involved!

I already have a subscription to the BNA through FMP’s parent company Brightsolid, just as I suspect other FMP subscribers do. Access to records on the BNA site is quick and easy. Why does FMP have to start from scratch when surely Brightsolid has already overcome most of the initial problems on its BNA site? Is it FMP’s intention to provide exactly the same access to records as currently enjoyed by BNA subscribers? Quite obviously, there is no need for me to duplicate payment for exactly the same information being provided.

Hello Jess,
At present our institutional FMP subscription will not allow us access to this resource. Is this temporary? We can search but not view the results.

Good pages, but INFURIATING to search through! Additionally, the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) can only try to do its best with some bad scans.

AS SOMEONE ELSE HAS ASKED, IS THERE A WAY TO ACTIVATE A GIVEN PUBLICATION AND BROWSE THROUGH ITS PAGES MANUALLY?

Thanks.

I agree with many of the above comments. Excellent resource but poor execution when compared with the BL Newspapers site (which can be accessed at home from some libraries eg Suffolk).
One point on the very poor OCR. In my experience with some difficult older docs, using sophisticated & expensive OCR software gave very poor results, but the basic OCR with MS Office gave excellent results.

I agree with all the comments above, filtering does not work, when looking for Joe Smith of Torquay (for example) get all the smiths, Joes, and Torquay. When I try to filter out to “family events”, once past the first page then the number of “hits” increase………..

Only way I could get one page (part of) after trying twice to download the pdf, was to use the “print screen” on my ‘puter and then past image into Word……..

Anne

The material is extremely useful but the search facility is awful, although I have been able to download most of the images I wanted. As well as all of the problems described above please add alphabetic ordering of filter criteria within their groups.
A further request, please add the ability to exclude a key word or phrase – when dealing with common names this can markedly reduce the false positives. Ideally also the choice of AND / OR.

Could FindMyPast please let us know when changes/improvements will be made to the search functions? Thank you.

Many many problems with the search facility. As has been pointed out already, the name search is useless unless you are searching an uncommon name. This search is simply looking for the two words in close proximity rather than recoginising you are searching for a first name and surname. As you get further down your list of hits the two words become further and further apart. When you do get results it is often impossible to find the word you searched for becasue they are not highlighted in the newspaper like they are in many other sites that digitise newspapers. You need to have more options for searching – an advanced search facility for instance like the Times Digital Archive or the other BL Newspaper collections. The datasource is great bu what you have provided in the way of search facilities is clearly not ready. Also, so far as I can see, there is not wasy to cut and past the section of the article you require – the only way I can find to do this is to printscreen and paste into a word document. I really think you should be offering this free to the public until you have sorted all of the problems out. If I were paying per view I would have contacted trading standards as I feel you are getting the public to pay for your beta-testing – in fact it is a con. Sort this our quickly because you are doing yourself no favours.

Not seeing many more answers or comments from FindMyPast spokespeople, are we? Most unsatisfactory.

Hi everyone,

Don’t worry, we’re reading all your comments and we’re pleased to say that we’ll be making some changes to our newspapers search this week. We think these will really improve your experience of searching the newspapers – not long to wait now!

Thanks for your patience,

Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)

I’m so pleased to hear that improvements are being made to this facility. I was thrilled to see the newspaper archive being added to the site, but all searches I’ve performed so far have failed to find anything worthwhile. It seems the more specific I make my keywords the more results I get. The few newspaper articles I have managed to filter using the keyword function have been incorrect when I’ve viewed the image, and as I’m using pay-as-you-go credits it’s a little frustrating. When it’s all running properly, it will be an amazing addition to the site.

Hi,

The wrong pages are still being downloaded .When will this be fixed?

Hi Tina,

We expect to have this fixed very soon – sorry to be slightly vague but there isn’t long left to wait now. We really do appreciate you bearing with us!

Thanks,

Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)

Hi Jess, I wish to take out a subscription to FindMyPast. Please can you say which subscriptions include the Newspaper database. Thank you.

Hi Jess
The search facility is much improved, however I can’t find the list of newspapers to search anywhere
Alison

Hi Jess
One of the newspapers I want to look at is the Middlesex Chronicle. It is listed on the British Newspaper Archive website but not on the findmypast website. Why is that happening?
Alison

Hi, Great resource, but unable to print.George

Can you give any indication of how many newspapers are still to be digitised? I’ve tried searching for a very specific event and I cannot find any relevant results, so I’m not sure if it is because it wasn’t covered in a newspaper or if the newspaper(s) haven’t been digitised yet.

Thanks.

Love it! Found details of a court case involving GGG grandmother and a drunk! Also details of Great uncle on casualty list of Boer WAr and relief of Ladysmith. Thanks to all those involved in putting this on line.

Despite so-called improvements, I’m still finding this to be exceptionally poor. The search results take AGES to appear, and when narrowing down the results to one or two publications, it says something like “2 results found”, but, in common with an earlier poster, no listed results actually appear! Waaaaaaaa!

Similalrly, when clicking on an image to display it, all that eventually appears when the image seems to have downloaded for displaying id a blak, blue screen. Clicking on “Download image” (to computer Desktop ot folder) has so far done the trick (as a PDF file), but it’s a very convoluted way of doing things.

This is just a huge time-waster, unless you have the patience of Job!

I’m a huge fan of findmypast and have had a sub for years. I’ve had some luck finding my families in the newspaper archives but find it very frustrating that the names I’m searching for aren’t highlighted. I keep getting sidetracked reading all the articles in the papers! Will names be highlighted in the future?
Keep up the good work!

I was very excited about this resource being made available at Find My Past. I’ve found some wonderful information regarding my family, but have totally been unable to download any of it. I just get a message saying the pdf file is damaged beyond repair. ????

I felt a bit aggrieved to discover you had put the newspapers on FMP the week you took my subscription renewal for BritishNewspapersonline. For some reason FMP is faster, However, the ability to search, refine, turn the page, correct and download the transcription is much better on the original. Does the reduction in revenue mean that the addition of new pages will slow down? I for one will continue to pay for the Rolls Royce, but I bet a lot of people don’t.

Hi Chris,

The British Newspaper Archive and findmypast.co.uk are completely separate companies, although we both have the collection of British newspapers. Both sites will continue to add new pages to their collections all the time. If you have a specific question for the British Newspaper Archive, here’s the link to their ‘contact us’ page so you can get in touch:

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/help/contact

Hope that helps,

Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)

Hello Jess
I’m afraid that saying that the British Newspaper Archive and Findmypast.co.uk are ‘completely different companies’ is a bit disegenuous. They are both part of brightsolid.

Hi Aled,

Both companies are indeed part of brightsolid but do operate as completely separate businesses.

Thanks,

Jess

The newspaper collection is potentially a great resource but it does need attention to the search engine. Searches for known articles is tedious as surnames seem to be encrypted. One example: the surname ballinger is rendered as “Ballmcer”. This is not a lone example. The value of this collection is diminished because of this inaccuracy.

Is it possible to search for a specific newspaper eg Hull Daily Mail, dated 2 January 1900. If so how do I do it? Thank you.