Why does a search give profiles with no date before profiles with a date?

Question

When I search for profiles on a first name, last name, and birth year, I am given profiles that are sorted such that those with no birth year are listed before those with a matching birth year.

This is particularly problematic when there are a huge number of matches, such as searching for John Smith born in 1803, where the match I want, Smith-4336, isn't even shown, because it is pushed off the page by the many John Smiths with no year of birth entered.

Can we update the search results to sort such that date match is prioritized over blank date?

Another egregious example, search for John Wright b. 1650 d. 1736.  He (Wright-3064) doesn't show up!

Comments

The search results should also prioritize same spellings over variants.

Excellent suggestion, William!

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I agree with Lindy's suggestion, but I can see an issue with prioritizing dates over blank dates. I have ran across many blank date profiles that were clear duplicates needing to be merged, and if the sort order was reversed, I feel this would significantly reduce the number of merges that could be found and completed.

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How about limit the non-dated results to say 50, so that dated results don't get pushed off the page?  Although for me, I ignore the undated ones, because I'm looking for a particular profile when I search like this, so having the undated ones first is a distraction for me.