Are WikiTree links to Ancestry URLs being blocked at the moment?

Question

I am finding that when I click on Ancestry.com links/URLs in a WikiTree profile, I almost always get error messages, but if I enter the same URLs in the address bar, the links work fine. Is there something going on that is preventing WikiTree links from resolving properly?

Comments

FWIW my links to the free-to-view images seem to be working.  Don't have an account to test the real URLs.

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Yes, perhaps there's something happening with the redirect to the Subscription order page. I tested a page without a sharing link and the same thing happened. Clicking on the link brings up an error 500, but entering the URL in the browser works fine. I am using Chrome, btw.

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It works for me. For example, the two Ancestry Record links in reference number 3 on this profile (one to ancestry.com, the other to the Australian site) are both fine. Would you like to try those, Ellen and Dina? Can you give specific examples where you get an error?

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Jim, from the Chrome browser in my phone I get the "Not Available" message for the Ancestry.com link and no response at all from Ancestry.au.

Similarly, from Firefox on my laptop, I get error messages if I attempt to access any of the Ancestry links  from https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Washington-3931

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Thanks for the response, Ellen. The Ancestry Record links on Washington-3931 work for me. This seems to show that the issue is not general but specific to your setup. It could be browser type, cookies, browser cache, or something along those lines. But if you're seeing failures (albeit with different error responses) on two devices with different browsers, maybe it's your Internet service provider. Are both phone and laptop using the same WiFi connection? Can you try a cellular connection on the phone?

Answer 1

What does the URL look like after you click on the link to Ancestry? Does it start with https://www.ancestry.com/mrd?key=U  ?

If so there is a discussion about that here: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1510322/what-extension-adds-prefix-https-www-ancestry-com-mrd-key-u

For that issue it seems to be fixed by clearing Ancestry cookies.

Comments

I use Edge and it was a chore to figure out how to delete cookies, but I did it and it worked!

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Yes, when I get the error on my laptop, the URL starts with https://www.ancestry.com/mrd?key=U

I also get the error on my phone (where I don't think I have the same cookies set that I have set on my computer). When I get the error on my phone I can't see the URL past the "key" item, but it is probably the same.

I am not getting this error when I am logged in as a project account, from a different browser, on my laptop.

When I saw it, I assumed it was a problem traceable to the WikiTree affiliate tag, and that is still my hunch. If so, it's something for the Team to discuss with Ancestry.

As has been noted, it's relatively easy to work around this particular issue (it was far, far, more difficult to work around the blockages that Ancestry used to impose me when I tried to access Ancestry any time after having once clicked on an Ancestry URL in ancestry.ca or any other Ancestry domain that was not ancestry.com), but the vast majority of WikiTree visitors who encounter this error will simply blame us for posting bad URLs.

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It's possible that the problem is neither at WikiTree nor Ancestry, but at the prf.hn tracking service between them.

Ellen: might adding the sysops tag be worthwhile?

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A post in Wiki Tech will get appropriate attention, sooner or later.

I agree that the issue may have to do with the  prf.hn affiliate tag, but historically these kinds of issues have been due to something at Wikitree something at Ancestry.com. various WikiTree Browser extensions also might be a factor.

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There have been at least four posts in WikiTree Tech mentioning the mrd?key=U issue already, dating back to 15 October 2022.

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Those previous posts appear to be about Sharing links and the external link template for sharing links, and at least one of them was quickly closed as resolved. This is affecting all kinds of WikiTree links to Ancestry content (including links to indexes and images of records, with and without external link templates). I encountered it when checking links to records that had been added within the previous 24 hours, and that work fine when accessed directly.

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The four previous posts mentioning the mrd?key=U problem (in some cases as well as sharing links) are as follows. No Team member seems to have responded on any of them. A  sysops  tag is well justified.

• 20221002 in WikiTree Tech
• 20221015 in the Tree House
• 20221223 in WikiTree Tech; closed because clearing cookies made it go away, not because the underlying issue was resolved
• 20230113 in WikiTree Tech

Edited to add: Probably also 20230210.

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Once someone has cleared their Ancestry cookies, does the issue reappear again? I was having the problem in Brave and it was fixed once I cleared Ancestry's cookies.

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I'm not sure, Jamie, but of the several people who got rid of the issue by clearing cookies, I don't recall any later saying it had come back.

Thank you for looking at this! It seems to be a weird and complicated error.

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Thanks to Jamie for looking into this.

I cleared my Ancestry cookies several days ago, and the problem went away for a little while, but it returned. I decided that there might have been a problem with previously visited Ancestry pages open in a window or tab, so I cleared the cookies again and tried to close everything that showed an Ancestry favicon. I'll see what happens with that.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if it is browser related as well. When I use Brave, I don't have an issue.

When using Chrome or Vivaldi, it throws a 502 Error when the page opens and reloading/refreshing the page doesn't work.

In Vivaldi, if you click on the reload link in the error message, it will load the page. However, in Chrome, that doesn't work.