Is Suggested Matches broken?

+7 votes
126 views
This morning I hand-entered several profiles and had no suggested matches show up; then I found that they'd long since been in the databases. Same first and last name spellings; same birth/death years (in a couple of cases, same exact dates!).  Is there an issue with the suggested matches?
in WikiTree Tech by Sharon Casteel G2G6 Pilot (162k points)
retagged by Abby Glann
I go to enter Zula Zylophone born 1750 in Switzerlnad and I get a suggested match to Allen Adams born in 1985 in Hoboken, New Jersey (or something like that).  Those suggestions are all over the place!

2 Answers

+6 votes
I have had a couple of instances where the matching profile doesn't show up until I go to add a relation to the profile I just added and they usually have the same or similar dates. There was one example where the birth year was out by 3 years on the correct profile yet when I looked at the suggested matches I had profiles 20 years difference showing up.

It works sometimes but not all the time. I also search by last name to see if there may be duplicates before adding the profiles now to hopefully reduce the instances of Missing matches.
by Darren Kellett G2G6 Pilot (408k points)
It's puzzling that profiles with 20-year discrepancies showed up as suggested matches. The matching algorithm normally looks out only 2 years in either direction, which is why it misses a 3-year discrepancy.

It is definitely good to search manually, as Darren describes, rather than relying on the suggested matches list.
+3 votes
We're hoping to do some updates to searches/matches in the near future. Thanks, Sharon.
by Abby Glann G2G6 Pilot (718k points)

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